


The Path of Duty

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucie left the Doctor of her own free will. Now it seems the Time Lords have another job for him and her. But he's no longer the man she knew, and she isn't the only companion in the TARDIS either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once A Companion

**Author's Note:**

> Since I haven't heard season 3 of Lucie's adventures or her departure story, this is an AU in which Lucie chose to leave the Doctor at some point after The Skull of Sobek. For Victoria, it is set a few years after she parted from the Second Doctor in Fury from the Deep.

"Oh, not again." Lucie Miller surveyed the interior of the TARDIS with a resigned air. "Why does this keep happening to me?"

"It saddens me to admit it," the stocky, bearded man standing at the console replied. "But it would seem that we have something in common. To whit, that sentiment."

"You what?"

" _Another_ young woman," the man replied, raising his eyes heavenward. "It's bad enough when he continually picks them up, but now we seem to be getting them delivered."

Lucie folded her arms.

"Look," she said. "I've been here before, and I know you're not the Doctor. So will you kindly get your backside in gear and fetch him?"

Before the man could reply, a door on the far side of the console room opened, and a tall, pale man surrounded by an air of unshakable gloom strode in. On seeing Lucie, he came to a sudden halt and looked down his nose at her.

"She claims to be one of yours," the bearded man said. "I hope you haven't been up to your old stalking ways again."

"Lucie Miller," said the pale man, seemingly more to himself than anyone else. "Don't tell me they've changed their minds again, and decided you are a threat to history after all."

The bearded man raised his eyebrows.

"Ah, the notorious Lucie," he said. "The one with an IE, rather than a Y. I've heard the stories."

"Just who are you two, anyway?" Lucie demanded. "The Chuckle Brothers?"

"Who?" the bearded man asked.

"Nah, you can't be. You'd make even the Chuckle Brothers seem funny." Lucie unfolded her arms, and advanced threateningly on the tall man. "Now will you stop mucking about and get the Doctor here?"

"As it happens," the man replied, looking at her rather as a head gardener might regard a maggot on his prize delphiniums, "I am he. Permit me to introduce my colleague. Lucie Miller, the Master. The Master, Lucie."

"Give over! You're never the Doctor."

"Do you mind if I just skip the next half-hour?" the Master interjected. "I've been through it so many times and the conversation never varies in its essentials."

"You'll do no such thing," the man who called himself the Doctor snapped. "You know perfectly well the conditions under which you're allowed to be here."

"Oh, very well." With a resigned shrug, he turned to Lucie. "Have you ever heard of the concept of regeneration?"

*

"All right," Lucie said. "I give in. You're the Doctor, and you don't look like the last time I saw you because of weird Time Lord stuff. And this bloke is your live-in lifestyle guru or best mate from school or butler or something, only every time I ask you two tell me something different. Is there anything else I ought to know?"

"Almost certainly," the Master said. "Was there anything in particular, or shall I start with basic temporal theory and work up from there?"

"You could start with what you meant by all that stuff about stalking."

"Ignore him," the Doctor said curtly. "He's just trying to make trouble."

The Master smirked. "Such a hasty reply," he said. "And such a guilty one."

"Out with it, you," Lucie said. "Stop dropping hints and tell me what he's been doing."

"As I said: stalking young women. I'm somewhat surprised that you haven't caught him creeping round your house or going through your dustbins."

The Doctor, who'd been trying to look aloof and uninterested, swung round. "I have not been going through dustbins," he snapped.

"Come to think of it," Lucie said slowly. "Amanda told me a bloke came round to our flat last week, while I was at work. He said he was from the Electricity Board. Was that you?"

"No, it certainly was not." The Doctor gave the Master another glare. "He's only trying to make trouble."

"I'm telling the exact truth," the Master countered.

"And I'd never claim to be from the Electricity Board."

The Master raised an eyebrow.

"Of course not, Doctor. How wrong of Miss Miller here even to suggest such a thing. It was the Gas Board, wasn't it?"

The Doctor seemed disinclined to answer.

"Is he telling the truth?" Lucie asked. "Well?"

"Yes, I did," the Doctor said crossly. "We were in 1972 and if I hadn't then a faulty heater would have exploded killing seven people."

"Then there's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Possibly not," the Master admitted. "On the other hand, I suspect that you'd look less favourably on the Doctor if you knew he'd been reading your diary."

"I haven't got one," Lucie said triumphantly.

The Master sighed. "I know you don't," he said. "Because if you had, he'd have read it to me by now. Or had me read it to him, if it was one of the more verbose ones. Dear me, some of those young women really needed to be taught that brevity is the soul of wit!"

Lucie stared at the Doctor. "You steal girls' diaries? What sort of a weirdo have you turned into?"

Before she got an answer, she caught a flicker of movement, and swung round. A door, presumably leading to the inner areas of the TARDIS, had opened, and a young brunette was standing there. She was dressed in a white full-length dress of antique design, her dark hair framing her pale, pretty face.

"Doctor?" she asked. Her voice matched the rest of her — upper-class, old-fashioned and understated. "What's happening? Who is this?"

"Ah," the Master said. "Miss Waterfield. Allow me to introduce Miss Lucie Miller." As the girl crossed the console room, he continued. "Lucie Miller, Victoria Waterfield. Victoria, Lucie. I am sure you two will find that you have very little in common."

Lucie, for want of anything better to do, stuck out her hand. Victoria shook it in a rather perfunctory manner. Both tried to ignore the Master, who by stance and gesture seemed to be hinting that he was presiding at a wedding ceremony.

"How d'you come to be here?" Lucie asked. "Did you get kidnapped like I was? 'Cos I don't see anyone wanting to travel with these two by choice."

"No, it wasn't by choice," Victoria said. "It was to save my life. I fell overboard from a boat."

"History records that she drowned," the Master said. "But you couldn't let things lie, could you, Doctor?"

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Victoria had travelled with me before," he said. "Like you. Naturally, when she left me, I kept an eye on her."

"More of what this bloke calls stalking, you mean?" Lucie asked.

The Master nodded. "And when he discovered how her story ended, he intervened. I'm surprised he was allowed to get away with it."

"Allowed? Oh, you mean the Time Lords, right?"

"They can't leave anything alone," the Doctor said sourly. "And when they do interfere, they can't get it right. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd thrown Victoria back in the sea and made me watch while she drowned. But they let her stay."

"Which we find suspicious," the Master added. "They probably have something even worse planned for her."

"Please don't say that," Victoria begged.

The Master continued his speech, unmoved. "And your arrival only reinforces our suspicions. We're about to be sent on another little mission, something that their high and mightinesses need sorting out but haven't got the nerve to do themselves."

"Scared of getting their hands dirty," the Doctor added. He and the Master seemed to have forgotten their earlier bickering completely, united in complaining about the Time Lords. Which was only fair, Lucie supposed. Given what Time Lord interference of one sort and another had done to her own peace of mind, she was half inclined to join in herself. And that was just the one time their paths had crossed. How frustrating must it be to have a full-time job working for the Time Lords, continually cleaning up their mistakes?

A disconcerting thought struck her. The Time Lords must have been the ones who'd brought her here. As far as they were concerned, she _was_ working for them. Along with a girl who was either a weirdo or a goth, a bloke in a beard who seemed to think he knew everything, and a Doctor who— well, if she was to be honest with herself, this Doctor made her feel nervous.

All in all, Lucie decided, she'd had much better days.


	2. Some Funny Old Pictures Which Were Priceless Works Of Art

The scanner display showed a long room, positively crowded with coats of armour, statues, glass-fronted cabinets, specimen tables, and weapons arranged in neat clusters. The walls were windowless, hung with paintings and tapestries; a skylight running down the centre of the ceiling admitted daylight.

"I presume you're going out there," the Master said.

The Doctor, still facing the scanner, waved dismissively. "You know that as well as I do. They," he made a vague upward gesture, "have overridden the controls. They're not going to let us go until we do whatever they've sent us here for."

"We?"

"I, then." The Doctor turned to his two other travelling companions. "Victoria. Lucie. I don't want to put your lives at risk. Wait here with the Master."

"You've got to be joking," Lucie retorted. "If you're really the Doctor, you know you can't fob me off like that. I'm not spending one second in here with him that I don't have to. I'm coming with you."

"I suppose I ought to come too," Victoria said. "If you think the Time Lords allow me to travel with you for a reason — well, it can't be just so I can stay in the TARDIS and take tea with the Master, can it?"

"So be it," the Doctor said, striding toward the main doors. "But don't say you weren't warned."

Lucie turned back to the Master. "Aren't you coming too?"

"Would that I could, my dear, but circumstances prevent me from leaving the TARDIS."

"That's something, then."

"It certainly is," the Master replied, but quietly enough not to be heard.

Lucie bustled out of the TARDIS doors, and into the gallery she'd seen on the scanner. Seen in reality, it looked even bigger. The air was cool and slightly damp, with blended smells of furniture polish and dry rot. The exhibits were ranged along both walls, leaving a broad walkway down the middle of the room, beneath the skylight.

While the Doctor busied himself locking the TARDIS and bestowing the key about his person, Lucie and Victoria found themselves standing awkwardly in the empty area.

"Big, this place, isn't it?" Lucie said, to break the silence.

"Very," Victoria agreed. "It must be fifty yards long if it's an inch."

"And all this stuff!"

"Yes," the Doctor said, glancing around. "What do you make of this 'stuff'?"

"Give us a chance," Lucie protested. "I've hardly had time to look."

"Then look, and let me hear your conclusions. I suggest you do the same, Victoria."

Lucie cast her eye over the collection of items nearby.

"It's a load of stuff, just like I said before," she said. "There's no labels on any of it, so this isn't a museum." She fidgeted, feeling as if she was on probation. "And... it's all old-time military stuff. Swords and drums and muskets and that."

"I agree," Victoria said. "All this was old-fashioned in my day. I don't recognise any of the uniforms or the badges, so we probably aren't in England." She looked around again, and shivered. "There's something about them that makes me uneasy, but I can't put my finger on it."

"Thank you both for your contributions." The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back, and looked up at the ceiling, which, apart from the skylight, was decorated with elaborate plaster designs. "Dear oh dear."

"Is there something wrong?"

"Just execrable taste." The Doctor looked down again. "Derivative, over-embellished, and far too much gold leaf."

"What if it is?" Lucie asked. "We haven't been sent here to do a makeover, have we?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but neither of the other two seemed to get it. Victoria just looked confused, and the Doctor didn't so much as smile.

"Architecture's a symptom," he said. "A clue to the society that produced it. Particularly the decorative sort like that. The same goes for art. Talking of which, what have we here?"

He turned his attention to a painting, which showed a naval action: two wooden ships, side by side, surrounded by swirls of smoke. Seemingly oblivious to the subject matter, he squinted at the brushwork.

"Again, remarkably lacking in subtlety," he said. "Obviously not by a first-rate artist."

Victoria joined him before the picture. "What strange designs. I don't think I've seen ships painted like that before, even in books."

"I believe it's an attempt at disruptive patterning," the Doctor said. "Camouflage, if you like. I beg leave to doubt how effective it would have been..."

Lucie, deciding that she was no art critic, mouched down the gallery, her attention divided between the neverending parade of military memorabilia and the gentle murmur of the conversation between the other two. It felt almost like being on a school trip, where inevitably she and one or two of her mates would try to get away from the group and into trouble.

By now, the Doctor she'd travelled with before would have dashed off more or less at random. She'd have been a few paces behind him, or a few paces ahead, and they'd have been poking as many metaphorical anthills with sticks as they could. But this Doctor was as fun and lively as a wet day in December.

Well, if he wanted to hang around looking at boring pictures, he could, and if Victoria could put up with it, good luck to her. She, Lucie, was going to do what she wanted and that was that.

She glanced idly at the next picture, glanced again, and came to a halt.

"Hey!" she called down the gallery. "Come and look at this."

The portrait was of a burly man in an elaborate uniform, but that wasn't what had caught Lucie's attention. He was standing behind a marble table, on which a map was spread out. The artist had obligingly allowed the map to hang down facing the viewer, and the outlines of several countries were visible.

"This can't be Earth," Victoria said. "I don't recognise any of those places."

The Doctor nodded. "I suspected as much from the picture of the ship. On Earth there was a century between those ships and that style of camouflage."

"So where are we?" Lucie asked.

"I don't know. None of those names or outlines rings a bell. And by the look of these pictures, the inhabitants are standard issue humanoids, like you two. It could be one of a thousand worlds."

Lucie gave him a belligerent look. "Thought you knew everything. And if we're bog-standard, what does that make you?"

"Guilty, if only by association," the Doctor said darkly.

"What?" Lucie turned to Victoria. "Is he always this obscure?"

Victoria gave a vague gesture of assent. "As a rule."

"I dunno, you're hardly chatty either," Lucie muttered. "Did you work out what was giving you the heebie-jeebies?"

"I think so. All these things, all different designs. I think everything here, the uniforms and guns and so on, are trophies. It reminds me of the gamekeeper when I was a little girl. He used to nail up the bodies of creatures that he'd caught — weasels and ravens and so on. This is the same thing, only bigger."

"Nice." Lucie looked round again. "And if they've collected all this stuff, they must've killed an awful lot of people. Come to think of it, we're not much better, are we? What about all that stuff in the British Museum?"

"We agreed this isn't a museum. It isn't for edification. It's something to glory over, to rejoice in. What sort of person would create a room like this?"

"I've met a few blokes who might. Don't think I want to meet any of them again." Lucie folded her arms. "Are we gonna _do_ anything, or just hang about in here all day?"

"Since time spent researching the culture we've landed in is obviously, to you, time wasted..." The Doctor shook his head. "I don't see why we shouldn't try a more direct approach."

He set off for the nearer end of the gallery, where double doors were framed by symmetrical arrangements of spears and pikes.

"About time too," Lucie said, hurrying after him.

By the time she and Victoria had caught up with him, he was already at the door, and was twisting the handle this way and that.

"Locked," he said. "Now, where did I put that—"

The lock clicked. On the other side of the doors, muffled voices could be heard. Then the doors were thrown open, revealing two guards in orange-red uniforms, who were aiming large, rather clumsy-looking guns at them.

The Doctor carefully raised his hands.

"I take it we're trespassing?" he said.


	3. A Simple Task

If you travelled with the Doctor for any length of time, you began to get used to being locked up in a cell. This one wasn't too objectionable, as cells went: it was chilly, but dry, well-lit, and well-scrubbed. The only furnishings were a long bench, on which Victoria was patiently sitting with her hands in her lap, and a bucket which Lucie hoped they wouldn't need to use. By standing on the bench it was possible to see out of the window into a courtyard, in which more soldiers were parading — some dressed in the same orange-red uniform as the men who'd imprisoned them, others in a drab grey.

"No sign of anything," Lucie reported, hopping down from the bench. "Just more of those squaddies marching up and down." She sat down beside Victoria. "I hope the Doctor's sorting things out, 'cos I don't want to spend the night here."

"I'm sure he is." Victoria forced a smile. "By now, I'd expect him to have found whoever's in charge, had a little chat with them, and installed himself as their most trusted advisor."

"I know what you mean. A couple of minutes after I met him, right, we landed on this planet and who's the first person we bump into? Only the Acting President! Dunno what he said to her, but he got round her all right."

"I don't think I ever met an Acting President. Certainly not a friendly one."

Lucie decided to change the subject. "The Doctor said you'd travelled with him before. Was he like he is now?"

"Oh, no. He was short, and very untidy. He was always very protective of me. My— my father died saving the Doctor's life, you see, and I think that led him to feel responsible for me."

"Oh. Sorry. I mean, I'm sorry your dad died, not sorry because I had anything to do with it."

"Thank you." Victoria cleared her throat. "What was your Doctor like?"

"Handsome. Always dressed up in old-fashioned stuff. Nice bloke, most of the time. We had some good laughs."

"Did you decide to stop travelling with him? I mean, of your own choice?"

"Yeah, pretty much. We'd landed on a planet and found a dead body. I thought: Business as usual. And then I thought: I'm getting used to finding dead bodies. I'm turning into someone who doesn't mind people dying. And I don't want to be that kind of person, ever." She took a deep breath. "That, and then there was a whole crocodile-monster thing going on as well. So, did you—"

The door opened, and a man came in. He was wearing a more elaborate version of the guards' uniforms, and carrying a smaller weapon — an officer of some kind, obviously.

"You are summoned to the Viceroy's presence," he said. "Immediately."

*

The Viceroy, it seemed, took himself seriously. He was sitting behind a desk, true, but the desk was on a daïs at one end of a large room. The chair he was sitting on was very nearly a throne; moreover, it was the only chair in the room. Behind the chair, the wall was lined with banners, differing in colour, but all including the same motif: a circle divided into four by curved lines. To Lucie's way of thinking, it looked rather like an electric fan. Soldiers, all armed with the same clumsy-looking longarms that everyone seemed to use round here, stood stiffly at intervals around the walls. They, too, had the symbol as a design on their buttons. Come to think of it, so did the man who'd brought them here.

The Viceroy himself was worthy of the room. Seated in his chair, wearing a spotless uniform, he looked large, forceful and decisive. But despite his appearance, his elevation, his chair, his banners and his guards, he wasn't the focus of attention. Everyone's gaze was fixed on the tall, pale, black-clad, taciturn figure of the Doctor.

If there had been a conversation in progress before the two women had arrived, it had instantly been broken off. They were escorted down the centre aisle of the hall in silence, save for the sounds of marching feet.

The Viceroy waited until the new arrivals were standing in front of the desk, a little to the left of the Doctor, and the man who'd brought them had saluted and marched out. Then he pointed at Victoria.

"You there," he said. "Why are you here?"

"I..." Victoria swallowed, and started again. "I am here because the Doctor is."

"Me too," Lucie added.

The Viceroy turned to her. His expression was obviously designed to intimidate, but it took more than a fishy glare to frighten Lucie Miller.

"Then tell me why the Doctor is here," he said.

"Well, he was sent here. You'd have to be, wouldn't you? I mean, the welcome you give guests, I don't think you'd have a lot of trouble with double-bookings."

"Guests are invited," the Viceroy replied drily. "Guests announce their presence at the main gate. Guests, in short, behave like guests, and not burglars or spies. You claim the Doctor has been sent here?"

"Yeah."

"By whom?"

"He never told us," Victoria said, before Lucie could answer. "We are not privy to such high matters."

"'Course, that doesn't mean we haven't tried to guess," Lucie added.

The Viceroy sat back, and surveyed the trio.

"It would seem that your girls agree with your story," he said, addressing the Doctor. "Though perhaps that just means you have coached them well."

"You believe me, then?" the Doctor asked, sounding utterly bored.

"Perhaps. I think, at the least, you should have an opportunity to prove yourself." He turned to the nearest guard. "Have Tercoryn brought here."

Again, they waited: Victoria nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, Lucie shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and the Doctor silent, ominous, and not moving a muscle. Lucie, finding the scrutiny of the Viceroy and his men oppressive, looked up at the dark beams of the ceiling, splashed here and there with rays of sunlight. The wood was carved and decorated, with shapes that she could only dimly make out — swords, spears, shields.

Having exhausted the possibilities of the ceiling, she turned her attention to the floor. But before she could make any serious attempt at puzzling out the pattern of the tiles, the sound of approaching footsteps made her look up. One of the orange-uniformed guards was marching in, followed by a shorter, grey-clad man.

The second man halted before the desk, and made a perfunctory gesture, presumably a salute, though it hardly looked worthy of the name.

"Major Tercoryn," the Viceroy said. "This man represents himself as an Imperial investigator."

Tercoryn turned and looked hard at each of them. Physically, he didn't seem to be a particularly fearsome man; he was plump, not particularly tall, and his hair was thinning. But above his bushy grey moustache, his eyes were dark and penetrating. Lucie tried to keep her face calm and inscrutable. _Yeah,_ she told herself. _Imperial investigators. That's us. Might even be true. Just not the empire you think._

"If he is, then his arrival is most opportune, my lord," Tercoryn said, turning back to the Viceroy.

"Exactly." The Viceroy looked from Tercoryn to the Doctor. "I shall give you a chance to prove your good faith."

"Go on," the Doctor replied, still sounding not quite bored enough to be insolent.

"My eldest daughter, Dornan, has been kidnapped. If you are who you claim to be, then it should be a simple matter for you to retrieve her. I shall give you a degree of freedom to make your enquiries as you see fit. And, in case you are an impostor, Major Tercoryn here will remain with you at all times.

"Do you accept this task?"

"What happens if I don't?" the Doctor asked. He was still affecting boredom, but Lucie thought there was something else in his voice, a faint echo of the enthusiastic and boundlessly curious Doctor she'd known before.

The Viceroy shrugged. "I hardly like to mention it, but since you ask: you, and the young ladies with you, will be incarcerated until your credentials can be established by other means. You appreciate that at this time of year, it may take some weeks for my message to reach Eutona, and a similar length of time before the answer arrives?"

"In plain language, you'll imprison me unless and until I do what you say." Lucie couldn't get a clear view of the Doctor's face from where she was standing, but it sounded as if he was smiling. "Faced with such a persuasive argument, how can I refuse? I accept your case."

"Very sensible, Doctor. Let me put the facts before you.

"My daughter Dornan is of marriageable age. For some years she has been promised to the Crown Prince of Tuvor; the Queen of Tuvor has promised that Tuvor will then become a permanent ally of the Empire. You see the importance of the match, of course.

"Three days ago, Dornan disappeared. Naturally, the palace was searched, with no result. So was the town. Nobody had heard anything. And then, yesterday morning, I received a communication from Harkett, the Governor of Umberscar. He tells me that he has my daughter, and has demanded a ransom. He feels he has been passed over for promotion." He snorted. "And with good reason. Even as it is, with power over only a small town, he is known as a heavy-handed and clumsy ruler. If he were given a regiment, or a city, or a province, within months it would be in open revolt."

"So the ransom that he demands is a promotion?" the Doctor asked.

"Correct. Or money, which he would doubtless use to bribe his way to power elsewhere in the Empire, or among the neighbour kingdoms."

"What happens if you don't pay?"

"That is nowhere mentioned."

"But the implication is perfectly clear." The Doctor nodded. "And this prevents you making any overt move of your own. But since my associates and I are not known to this Governor, you think that we can succeed where an army would fail."

There was a momentary silence.

"'Scuse me," Lucie said.

Everyone, she realised, was looking at her. She squared her shoulders, and stared back at the Viceroy. He should have learned by now that funny looks didn't work on her.

"You don't sound too worried," she ploughed on. "I mean, she's your daughter. Aren't you afraid about what might happen to her?"

"She's too valuable a bargaining piece to be thrown away," the Viceroy said calmly. "As long as Governor Harkett is not pushed to extreme measures, he will take care not to harm her."

"Yeah, but..." Lucie bit her lip. "Nothing."

"Then this audience is concluded. Tercoryn, see that quarters are made available for the Doctor and his women."


	4. Good News, Bad News

It wasn't until the Doctor, Victoria and Lucie were in the quarters that had been assigned to them that they were able to discuss their meeting with the Viceroy. The rooms had been subdivided from one floor of a round tower: two parallel walls had partitioned the space into two bedrooms and a long, narrow sitting room. At one end of this was the only entrance, a door leading to the top end of a spiral staircase; Major Tercoryn had stationed sentries at the bottom, for (as he put it) their protection. The walls were plastered and the windows glazed, but there was a chilly, cheerless feel to the place.

"Can we talk now?" Victoria began.

The Doctor looked around. "I think so. But keep your voices low, just to be on the safe side."

"Not like we can turn a tap on," Lucie muttered. Wherever and whenever this was, they hadn't invented the ensuite bathroom. A large jug of cold water, a bowl and a cake of what was presumably soap were the only concessions in that direction.

"Do you think we've been sent here to rescue this poor girl?" Victoria asked.

"Well, it's possible," the Doctor said. "After all, from the way the Viceroy was talking, it could make a significant difference to the history of this world whom she marries."

"Yeah," Lucie said. "But did anyone ask her what her opinion was?"

"I shouldn't think so, not for a moment."

"And her dad didn't care about her, did he? I mean, as a person. She's just a bargaining chip to him. That's all."

"That was what you meant when you asked him if he was worried, then?" Victoria said. "I wondered about that, too. He seemed very calm."

"I expect he hasn't taken the slightest interest in her," the Doctor said. "Probably left her upbringing to servants."

"And now he's gonna marry her off just like that," Lucie said. "If I was this girl, I'd have told him where he could stick his Crown Prince and his Queen of Wherever."

Victoria flushed slightly. "Please, Miss Miller—"

"Look, I said to call me Lucie."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. I don't feel I know you well enough."

"Whatever."

"Let's get back to the point," the Doctor said. "We know, or believe we know, that this Governor Harkett has her. Now, if you were a somewhat clumsy local governor, with a valuable hostage, what would you do with her?"

"You mean would I lock her up?"

"Yes. And where would you keep her? Throw her in the cells, or put her under house arrest and try to make her comfortable?"

"Search me."

The Doctor turned to Victoria.

"Any thoughts?" he asked.

Victoria shook her head. "I wouldn't have kidnapped her in the first place. I can't think like a villain."

"Now, there's a thought," the Doctor said. He delved in one of his pockets, pulled out a black, battered-looking mobile phone, and punched a few buttons on it.

"Hello?" he said. "Yes, I can hear you. And whatever that godawful music is that you're listening to. Oh, is it? Then you have no taste. What? If you let me get a word in edgeways I'll tell you. We're trying to trace a young woman who's been kidnapped. The Viceroy's daughter. He suspects one of his subordinates — a town governor, not known for his subtlety. We wondered if you had any ideas where we should be looking. Well, with your remarkable knowledge of the criminal psyche... I see. And do you have anything to say that might actually be useful? No, they haven't. Or that, either. You're letting your imagination run away with you. Yes, and you do the same."

He stabbed at the telephone again, and dropped it into his pocket.

"In case you're wondering," he said, "the Master suggests that we confront this man and try to trick him into giving away more information than he means to. Apparently we'd be amazed how often it works. He also had a few suggestions where we might look for the young lady."

"What did he ask you at the end?" Lucie said. "When you said 'No, they haven't.'"

"He was asking if you and Victoria had been quarrelling. Preposterous idea."

"Yeah, we're best mates, aren't we?" It came out far more sarcastic than Lucie had intended.

"Are you going to follow the Master's suggestion?" Victoria asked.

"I'll talk it over with our minder. He'll probably want to come along for the ride." The Doctor rose to his feet and set out down the stairs, leaving Victoria and Lucie, facing each other, in awkward silence.

"Dunno why the Master thought we'd quarrel," Lucie said, eventually.

"I wouldn't pay him much attention," Victoria replied. "He seems to enjoy making people feel uneasy."

"Uneasy, yeah." Lucie rose to her feet, crossed to the window, and looked out. Below was a courtyard, now in shadow; the sun must be low in the sky, on the far side of the tower. Beyond the courtyard were further ranges of buildings, then the roofs of what looked like a large town. In the distance, on the horizon, mountains reared their heads, their peaks midnight-blue where the sun's rays caught them.

"It's getting late," she said.

"I can't imagine we'll be going anywhere tonight." Victoria yawned. "We shall have to sleep here."

 

The Doctor didn't return until much later, by which time Lucie was getting hungry and short-tempered. Victoria had joined her at the window by then, but in the rapidly-failing daylight it was impossible to see much of anything. Conversation had flagged. The main topic of discussion would undoubtedly have been the Doctor and their past experiences with him, but Victoria hadn't wanted to talk about them. Under the circumstances, she'd said, it wouldn't be discreet.

When the door opened, they both turned at the same time. Only then did they realise how dark the room had become. The oil lamp in the Doctor's hand, dim though it was by twentieth-century standards, was still bright enough to make Lucie rub her eyes. Lit from beneath, the Doctor looked positively sinister as he stalked into the room.

"How did it go?" Lucie asked.

"I have good news," the Doctor replied. "And I have bad news."

He set the lamp down on a table, and folded his arms.

"Aren't you going to tell us?" Victoria said.

"The good news is that Major Tercoryn has agreed with my plan of visiting this Governor," the Doctor said.

"You mean the Master's plan?"

"It fits quite well with the conventions of kidnapping in these parts," the Doctor said, ignoring the question. "By calling on him, as representatives of the Viceroy, we shall be indicating that we're open to a settlement."

"What d'you mean, conventions?" Lucie asked.

"I'm afraid kidnapping is quite a common occurrence in these parts. Almost a standard tool in the negotiator's armoury. They nearly always end with a quiet settlement and the return of the victim."

"So that's why the Viceroy was taking it all so calmly. But hang on. What's the bad news?"

"The bad news is that one of you two has to remain here, as a hostage for _my_ good conduct."

"What? Come off it!"

"I'm not joking. These people want to be sure that we aren't secretly in league with Governor Harkett. So they've said that one of us should stay in their power, just in case the others try anything funny."

"I bet it was Tercoryn came up with that idea. I don't trust him."

"Neither do I," Victoria added.

The Doctor shook his head. "Believe it or not, it's another standard part of kidnapping etiquette. There's a further complication: the weather."

"What about the weather?"

"Apparently, the wet season's going to start any day now. These soldiers are all armed with flintlock muskets — they don't work in the rain. And one good storm makes half the local roads impassable to anything with wheels. So whatever we do, it's got to be quick."

"Harkett must have known that when he kidnapped the Viceroy's daughter," Victoria said. "He wanted to put time pressure on the Viceroy."

"Almost certainly. Any other questions?"

Lucie waited briefly, in case Victoria wanted to say something. When it became clear that Victoria didn't, she carried on. "Do we get anything to eat this evening?"

"Dinner's being sent up," the Doctor assured her. "Whether you'll be so eager for it once it actually arrives, is a different matter."

"Crikey. You're not a glass half-full person, are you? More like glass so empty it hasn't even got air in it." Lucie stared at the Doctor, trying to trace some resemblance — any resemblance — to the man she'd known before. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

The Doctor made no answer.


	5. Not To Be Found

The morning was chilly and the stones of the courtyard still damp with dew. Lucie moved from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm, and wishing the Doctor would hurry up. With elaborate ceremony, he had taken a large coin from his pocket, and was now, painstakingly slowly, going through the motions of flipping it into the air, catching it, and covering the result with his hand.

"Your call, Victoria," he said.

"Tails," Victoria replied.

The Doctor held the coin out. "Tails it is. Victoria comes with me. Lucie, I'm afraid you'll have to stay here."

"I'll cope," Lucie said grumpily. If the previous day had been aggravating, this one was shaping up to be worse. On the Doctor's insistence, she and Victoria were wearing examples of the local fashions, the better to blend in. The dress had proved to be heavy, hot and uncomfortable, and its full-length hooped skirts were constantly getting caught on things. Somehow, the style, which on Victoria flattered her figure and rendered her positively alluring, managed to make Lucie resemble an outsized traffic cone.

"Per will stay here with you," Major Tercoryn said. "Ask him if you need anything."

"Per" was a younger man than the Major, but with the same grey uniform. Lucie didn't have a handle on the rank system that they used, but presumably he was one of Tercoryn's subordinates. He nodded at Lucie, but didn't speak.

"I hope we'll be back by this afternoon," the Doctor said. "Umberscar's only an hour away."

He helped Victoria into the carriage, then climbed in after her. The Major followed, closed the door behind them, and rapped on the roof. The coachman cracked his whip, and the four creatures drawing the carriage — vaguely horselike, but scaly, with reptilian eyes and toothed beaks — walked forward. Lucie watched until the carriage was out of sight.

"Right," she said to the man Per. "Have you got a library in this place?"

"We have, miss."

"And can I go there?"

"I'll take you to it at once."

"Thanks." Lucie noted that his eyes seemed to be aimed a little lower than her face. For a moment, she considered saying something along the lines of "I'm up here," but decided against it. If the cut of her dress was distracting him, that might come in useful later. You never knew.

*

"Are you uncomfortable?" the Doctor asked. "You've been fidgeting ever since we set out."

"Oh, it's nothing physical," Victoria said. "It's just this dress. It's so immodest at the front. People can see... well, more of me than I'd like them to."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "I certainly wouldn't call it indecent or anything. It's just a few square inches of skin."

"I still don't like it." Victoria shifted her shoulders again, trying to hide herself inside the objectionable garments. "I'm sure Lucie's was a better fit."

"She wouldn't agree with you."

"She doesn't agree with anything. I've never known such an argumentative young person." Victoria glanced out of the window, where the Major seemed to be discussing some point of the route ahead with the driver. "Was she like that before?"

"When I first met her. Once we knew where we stood with each other, she was much more... let's say, agreeable. I'm afraid you won't find her manners very polished, though."

"I had noticed." Victoria tugged at her dress, to no avail. "And she seems to have no sense of modesty, either. But that is by the by. You said she has travelled with you?"

"Yes. And, if you can, try not to take her bluster seriously. That's all it is. She's a good girl at heart."

"I'm not sure she'd like to hear you calling her a girl," Victoria said, smiling slightly.

Before the Doctor could answer, the Major was climbing into the carriage, and the opportunity for further conversation was lost.

*

"Unavailable?" the Doctor demanded, staring down his nose at the terrified young footman. "I find that hard to believe. Surely Governor Harkett was informed that we would be calling on him today?"

"He was," Major Tercoryn added, drily. "The message was sent by express last night. I spoke in person to the man who delivered it. He said he was given the most earnest assurance that it would be given to the Governor at the earliest possible opportunity. Have someone go and find out whether it was."

The lackey bowed, and scurried from the room.

"I don't like this," the Doctor said. "Surely the Governor can have no more urgent business than a visit from the Viceroy's representative? Not to mention my insignificant person."

The Major nodded. "I don't think he's here at all. And if he isn't, that means the girl isn't, either. He's got her salted away in some hideout."

"Is that usual in this kind of situation?" Victoria asked. She had a feeling that the Doctor wanted to ask a question along those lines, but couldn't risk exposing his ignorance. "I mean, are hostages usually kept hidden?"

"Common practice is to keep them under guard in your best stronghold. It only takes a few trusted men. I suggest that we move carefully, Doctor."

"Duly noted," the Doctor said.

They waited in silence for a little, until the door of the anteroom was opened and the footman crept in again.

"I must offer my profound apologies, my lady, gentlemen," he said. "But it seems that the Governor is in the village of Marbridge inspecting the flood defences. I cannot comprehend why you were not informed of this before—"

"Because it isn't true," Victoria said sharply.

She saw the Major and the Doctor swing round and look at her, and then back at the footman. She felt herself blushing.

"It isn't," she repeated, addressing herself mainly to the Doctor. "He's lying, I know he is."

"I'm inclined to agree," the Doctor said, walking around the trembling footman like a long-legged bird of prey circling a terrified vole. "Your story does not add up, sir. Tell us the truth."

The man's mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

"You realise that we can, if necessary, use torture to make you reveal what you know?" the Major added cheerfully. "The Viceroy has granted me a warrant in that respect."

"Sir, I honestly do not know where the Governor is!" the footman blurted. "Nobody does. When the message came last night, he retired at once to his private quarters. This morning, he was nowhere to be seen."

"What about his clothes?" the Doctor asked. "Do you know what he was wearing?"

"And check the stables," Tercoryn said. "See if he was riding, or on foot."

Once more, the footman departed, moving, if anything, more swiftly than the previous time.

"Looks as if he's made a run for it," the Major said. "I expect we'll find he disguised himself, slipped out of his room, and rode off. Kor knows what he'd hope to gain by doing that, though. He must know we'd raise the country against him." He tapped his teeth with his forefinger. "Perhaps he's counting on the rains coming before we find him, but even in the rain, if he can ride, so can we."

"Perhaps he intended to be back in time to meet us," Victoria suggested. "But he met with some accident on the way."

"Your innocence does you credit, miss, but I've seen enough of the world to suspect the worst every time."

"It's a good idea, though," the Doctor said. "If nothing else, it gives us a plausible excuse to have everyone out looking for him. Say that we think he's had an accident, and offer a reward for information."

The Major nodded. "Sound thinking. And once we've issued those orders, I suggest we take a look at his papers."

*

"I reckon you were right," Lucie said, closing the book and putting it to one side. "All this astronomy stuff's a bit over my head." She tried a simper, hoping she wasn't overdoing things.

"Then perhaps I can find you a book more suited to your tastes?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Well, I need to try and be useful. Have you got any maps of.. where were the other two going? Umberscale?"

"Umberscar." The Lieutenant looked uneasy. "The military maps are restricted. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate..."

"Oh, please?" Lucie leaned forward, making sure he had a good eyeful of her cleavage. "I'm only trying to help the Viceroy and his daughter. And you'll be with me, won't you, to make sure I don't do anything wrong?"

"How could I resist such an appeal?" The Lieutenant held out his arm. "The map room is this way."

Lucie essayed another simper. "Thank you... Per."

*

The Governor's office was obviously intended, bearing in mind the limitations of the building, to project the same aura of imperial power as the Viceroy's throne room, back in the palace. The half of the room containing his desk was a few inches above ground level, causing anyone going from one side of the room to the other to risk stumbling over the step. Behind the desk was a window, giving an excellent view over the handful of streets that made up Umberscar. Beyond were fields, the vegetation in them tinted various shades of turquoise and aquamarine, with the hedges between them a darker blue. Birds wheeled in the sky.

"Cannon requisitions." Tercoryn shuffled through a heap of papers. "Watchmen's rations. Nothing out of the ordinary here."

"What were you expecting?" the Doctor asked. "A note? 'If anyone calls for me, I'll be in my most secret hideout, send them on'?"

"I wouldn't put it past Harkett," the Major said. "Not one of the Empire's brightest." He started on the next stack of papers. "Mind you, it looks as if he was bright enough to pull off kidnapping the Viceroy's daughter, and not to mix up his secret correspondence with his daily business."

"Not something you'd expect from his past record?"

"Certainly not."

"Then perhaps you're suggesting the idea wasn't his?"

"The idea may have been, but he cannot have constructed a plan like this unaided."

Victoria looked from the Doctor to Tercoryn and back. Despite the fact that they were both trying to solve the same mystery, it seemed to her that they were racing against each other, desperate to be the first to snatch each crumb of evidence.

"We shall have to interrogate his staff, of course," the Major said. "His journey last night may have been the latest of many."

"Why not ask them now?" The Doctor pulled a drawer out of the desk as far as it would go. "You don't have to waste your time with us if you don't want to."

"I assure you, Doctor, I am not wasting my time. I get few opportunities to see an Imperial investigator at work. It will be interesting to see if your department's reputation is justified."

"How flattering. But if this man is as unimaginative as you say, there will be little to see in the way of elegant deductive reasoning." The Doctor slid the drawer home, and pulled out the one below it. "Just a certain amount of guesswork — and brute force."

He tugged at the drawer, hard. With a splintering noise, it shot out of the desk, causing the Doctor to stumble backwards and nearly break the window.

"A secret compartment!" Tercoryn pounced on the back of the drawer, where, behind the last section that had previously been visible, was a small rack containing folded papers.

"How did you know it was there?" Victoria asked, wide-eyed.

"The drawer didn't move as easily as it should," the Doctor said. "You'll notice the compartment's been overfilled; those papers sticking out of the top were binding on the drawer above."

Tercoryn looked up from the letters, any trace of his previous excitement carefully hidden. "As you say, Doctor, no great quantity of deductive reasoning."

"And what did our friend Harkett feel was so important that he had to keep it in a not-very-well-designed secret compartment?" the Doctor asked.

"It's in code," Tercoryn said simply.

The Doctor picked up one of the sheets of paper and glanced nonchalantly at it. "More likely to be a cipher," he countered.

"Whichever it is, I am sure that you—" The Major broke off. "Someone's coming. And by the sound of things, with news that cannot wait."

Sure enough, the running footsteps of several people could be heard, hurrying rapidly closer. As the Major slid the coded papers into his jacket, the Doctor returned the drawer to its rightful place in the desk.

"Come in," he called, a fraction of a second after the footsteps stopped and before the first knock on the door.

An orange-clad officer hurried into the room and saluted.

"Major," he said. "Sir. Miss. The Governor is dead."


	6. And Here We All Are

The place wasn't anywhere with a name. It was just a bridge over a river, surrounded by fields containing nothing but stubble and blue weeds. The river itself was small, barely more than a stream, at the bottom of a channel that would have suited a much larger watercourse. By leaning out over the parapet, Victoria could see the oversized piers of the bridge, made of carefully-mortared stone blocks, and built on the most massive scale.

"It would appear that you were right, Victoria," the Doctor said, slightly stressing 'appear'. "The Governor went out for a ride last night. His mount stumbled on the bridge, and threw him. This morning a farmer found the body and had to walk three or four miles into town before he could report it."

Victoria nodded. She looked down at the cobbled surface of the bridge. Nice, clean cobbles, damp after a shower of rain that morning, with no footprints or other marks. No clues trodden into the cracks.

"Would the Governor have ridden out here alone?" she asked. "I would have expected him to have an escort."

"We know, when he left Umberscar, that he took nobody with him," the Major said repressively. He turned to the man who'd reported the death. "That is correct, isn't it?"

"Only one beast was missing from the stables, sir. And the grooms swear that the only one that left was the one the Governor took."

"And, riding, he would hardly take infantry as guards." The Doctor looked out over the fields. "Has his mount been found?"

"Not yet. Probably bolted."

"I daresay it'll show up at one of the local farms. Victoria, what are you doing?"

Victoria had, in fact, been trying to make sense of the footprints at the mouth of the bridge, where the cobbled surface gave way to dirt. Hobnailed boots, overlaid with horseshoes — pretty much what you'd expect to see. But from the Doctor's tone, it was clear that he was expecting her to dissemble.

"I was looking at the birds," she said, gesturing vaguely at a couple of dispirited-looking waterfowl sitting on the riverbank. They were, she supposed, this world's equivalent of ducks — very similar to the ones on Earth, bar a greenish tint to their bills, and the fact that they seemed to have four legs.

"Then stop daydreaming." The Doctor winked at her, so quickly that she wasn't sure she'd seen anything. "We've got more important things to consider. What do you think we should do now?"

Victoria racked her brains. "I suppose we should go back to Umberscar and see if anyone can think where the Governor might have gone. Where does this road go?"

"To the coast, eventually," the Major said. "Several days' journey. I'll have enquiries made along the road, but Harkett was hardly trying to attract attention."

"Back to Umberscar, then?" the Doctor said.

The Major shook his head. "I think not. We must report this news to the Viceroy at once."

"Surely a messenger would suffice?"

"There's also the matter of these papers." He tapped his pocket. "They can be dealt with much better at the palace."

"That only needs one of us."

"Then it had better be you, Doctor. The Lieutenant here and some of his men will accompany you." He turned to a junior officer. "Escort this carriage, with these two people on board, back to the Palace. When you arrive, give these papers and this note to the Chief Clerk." He handed the papers he'd found earlier, now sealed with a ribbon, to the man, and watched him while he slid them into his satchel. "Doctor, I shall make some further enquiries in Umberscar and report back later tonight or tomorrow. The rest of you, come with me."

  


"He seemed very eager that we should be sent back to the palace," Victoria said, once they were back in the carriage and on their way.

The Doctor glanced at the officer sitting opposite them. "Yes. I can think of several reasons why he might do that. How does this one strike you: This is a mess, and he doesn't want us looking in and telling tales to our superiors until he knows just how bad a mess it is?"

"It would cover the facts, I suppose."

The Doctor nodded at the Lieutenant. "What do you think?"

"I—" he paused briefly, seemingly startled at being addressed directly. "I wouldn't presume to question my superior officer's decision."

"No, I don't imagine you would. He might get to hear about it, and then where would we all be? Don't bother trying to answer that."

Silence fell, at least within the carriage. Victoria looked out of the window, trying to work out how far away they were from the Viceroy's palace, and how soon they might get back there.

 _Of course,_ she thought, _there's another reason why he'd want to get rid of us. If he's involved with the kidnapping, he won't want us nosing round._

She glanced at the Doctor, whose face wasn't giving anything away. But he said he'd thought of several reasons.

 _Or he's worked out that we're impostors. And the sealed orders he gave that man are to have us executed as spies._

She closed her eyes and tried not to think about it.

*

A fire had been lit in the fireplace of their tower room since the morning. It hadn't made Lucie's greeting any warmer.

"We've been away perhaps three and a half hours," the Doctor said. "Not 'forever' by any stretch of the imagination."

Lucie didn't look mollified. "Well, you try putting up with kicking your heels in some dusty library with a bloke who doesn't have anything useful to say, only stares at you. 'Cos time doesn't half drag like that. Did you find anything?"

"We found a corpse," the Doctor said. "Governor Harkett is dead, apparently in an accident. And nobody else there seems to know anything about the kidnapping or where he might have hidden Dornan."

"The Doctor did find these papers." Victoria spread them out on the table. "Major Tercoryn says they're in some sort of code. These aren't the originals, they're with the Viceroy, but the Major's orders said we were to have copies."

Lucie looked, and then covered her eyes.

"That's so weird," she said. "It's like the letters keep changing, or the paper's moving. What's going on?" She shook her head. "Hang on, don't tell me. TARDIS translation, right? The TARDIS translates anything we see written. Except this is in code, and we don't know the code, so it can't translate."

"Got it in one," the Doctor said.

"So what can we do about it? If we can't even read this, how are we going to decode it? Can you turn the translation off, or something?"

"If I can, and I do, how would you read the results?"

"Yeah." Lucie shook her head. "This is gonna blow our cover. We can't go to that Major and say 'sorry, we can't read this 'cos our time machine can't handle the translation,' can we?"

"Could you only stop the TARDIS translating for one of us?" Victoria suggested. "Then that person could see the coded message and try using keywords on it. And if the other two could read it, they'd know we had the right result."

"That's not a bad idea," the Doctor said. "Let's see..."

He concentrated briefly.

"Oh!" Victoria looked at the papers again. "Is that what all these documents really look like? It's so strange. This isn't anything like English writing at all."

She looked from one sheet to another.

"I suppose I should start by seeing how many there are of each letter— no, I can't do this. I don't even know how many letters there are in the alphabet they're using!"

"Perhaps we'd better come back to that," the Doctor said. "Lucie, how did your morning go?"

Lucie added her scribbled notes to the heap of papers on the table.

"Here's a map," she said. "I copied it off the one they let me see. So Umberscar's here, where these roads meet the river."

"Hmm. Yes. That's the castle, where we were this morning. And Harkett's body was found somewhere here." He pointed. "Maybe it's where he actually died, maybe not."

"Didn't you look at the footprints and work out something clever from them?"

"There weren't any. Would you believe, in a countryside full of dirt roads and ditches, he chose the only stone bridge in a ten-mile radius to fall off his horse and break his neck?"

"That's a pretty big coincidence. Even more than him dying just when you want to go and have a little chat with him." Lucie looked at the map. "So, if he was coming that way, he'd been in this village here. Unless he doubled back and he'd actually been coming from somewhere up in the hills. Or... could have been anywhere, really."

"And if he was killed somewhere else and his body left there, the same principle applies," Victoria said. "Either it was the nearest place, or we're only meant to think that it was the nearest place."

The Doctor pored over the map, once again nearly immobile.

"Did you discover anything else?" he asked, suddenly.

Lucie grinned. "Only the name of this planet. There was an astronomy book in the library, right? So I took a look. They had one of those pictures where the sun goes round the world, and then another one where they've worked out that the world goes round the sun, like all the other planets. So I reckoned, this has got to be the one the sun was going round in the first picture."

"A reasonable hypothesis."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. So if I'm right, this planet's called Skaro."

She looked from the Doctor to Victoria, and back.

"Did I say something wrong?" she added.


	7. Cracking

Lucie hurried up the last few steps of the spiral staircase, pushed open the door at the top, and stepped out onto a narrow balcony, which presumably ran all the way round the tower. A low, crenellated parapet round the outside was the only thing between Lucie and a fatal drop to the courtyard below, while on the inner side of the walkway the tower was topped by a conelike spire, hung with blue-black tiles. A cool breeze was blowing round the battlements, blurring the sounds from below.

Lucie looked to her left and right, shrugged, and set off at random, keeping to the inner edge of the walkway and trying not to look down. As a result, she ended up nearly tripping over Victoria, who was sitting cross-legged on the balcony, her back to the tower, looking out over the castle and the city to the distant forest-clad mountains.

"Hey," Lucie said. "You all right?"

"Miss Miller," Victoria said. She briefly looked up, then away; it was plain that she'd been crying. "Please leave me alone."

"Look, what's the matter with you?" Lucie crouched down awkwardly in the narrow gap between tower and battlements. "You've been up here for hours and you haven't had anything to eat or drink."

"I'm not hungry. Perhaps I'll come down when gets dark."

"What d'you mean, perhaps?"

"It doesn't matter." There was a bleak despair in Victoria's voice. "Nothing we do here matters."

"You shouldn't talk like that."

"This is Skaro." Victoria pronounced the word as if it was a death sentence. "Don't you realise what that means?"

"The Doctor said you've been here before. That this is where your dad got killed." Lucie put her hand on Victoria's shoulder. "But there aren't any Daleks yet. There's no need to worry about them showing up."

"I'm not."

"Then come down with me. Whatever's bugging you, we can talk it over with the Doctor."

Slowly, Victoria rose to her feet. Lucie followed suit.

"Come on," Lucie added. "We can't break that code without you."

"So that's the only reason you've come up here? You want to use me. That's all I am to the Doctor, and you, and the Time Lords, and everyone. Just something that might come in useful, now and again."

"Don't be stupid!" Lucie's self-control, never particularly strong, was being further undermined by her physical unease. She was still trying not to look down, but just knowing she was so close to a sheer drop was enough to make the soles of her feet tingle. "If you don't come and help us this girl might die, all because you're pissing about up here—"

At the sudden, stinging, pain, she broke off with a gasp, and stared at Victoria, who stared back mutely. For what seemed ages, neither moved and neither spoke. Then Lucie slowly raised her right hand to her cheek where Victoria had slapped her.

"You said I've been here before," Victoria said. "That isn't quite right. I've been here _after_. I've seen what this world is going to become. It doesn't matter whether we save Dornan or not, because in a hundred or two hundred or a thousand years her whole people are going to be wiped out and nobody's even going to remember what they were called. This is a Dalek world in the future. Think about what that means. No life of any kind except the Daleks. No people. None of those horse-things. No birds. No insects. Not even any trees. Just the stripped bones of the planet, and those horrible monsters." She took a deep breath, and sat down again. "I think you should go now."

"I'm gonna tell the Doctor," Lucie said. It didn't sound a particularly convincing threat even to her own ears, and Victoria gave no sign of having heard it.

*

The Doctor's reaction, when Lucie did tell him, was merely to nod understandingly.

"She won't do anything rash," he said. "She's too well brought up for that."

"Her, and you, and the Master." Lucie sat down and looked at the papers. "You're all, I dunno..."

"Broken?"

Lucie looked up, into the Doctor's pale eyes. She tried to speak, but no words came out.

"It's a funny thing about breakages," the Doctor said. "They leave sharp edges. Edges that come in useful for weapons... or surgical operations."

"That's why we're here, isn't it? The Time Lords want to do something to the history of Skaro. Before there even were any Daleks."

"I see your own wits are still as sharp as ever, Lucie." The Doctor smiled reluctantly. "And as for why we're here: I know you didn't want to be here. Neither did Victoria. Neither do I. We're here because we have no choice in the matter."

"Yeah." Lucie took a deep breath. "You're saying the only way we get out of here is finding this girl, and the only clue we've got to her is that code, right?"

"Right."

"So we need to find out about the alphabet they use here, and perhaps some writing so's you can see which letters are the most common ones?"

The Doctor gave her an odd look. "Yes. You're up to something, Lucie Miller. I recognise that expression."

"Here's a dictionary." Lucie opened the reticule that she'd been given to go with her clothes. "And a novel. Per said it was a classic. 'The Towers of Torvento', by A Lady. It's all about this girl whose parents are dead and she's got to go and live in a spooky castle."

"Impressive." For a second, the Doctor's face lit up in unmistakeable delight. Before Lucie could comment, though, he'd returned to his usual grim expression. "Let's get started, then. I'll suspend your knowledge of the language, and we can start to work out an alphabet and some letter frequencies."

*

By the time that Victoria reappeared, looking pale and utterly miserable, the Doctor and Lucie had exhausted their supplies of paper and were continuing their decoding efforts with chalked diagrams on the floor.

"There you are," the Doctor said. "I think we're making fairly good progress. Looks like a variant of four-square — well, four-rectangle with this alphabet. Lucie's working on a list of possible keywords now, but it's slow going."

"Oh."

"How about lending us a hand?"

"Must I?"

"It's entirely up to you. But you may feel better with something to occupy your mind."

Victoria squared her shoulders. "Very well. What would you have me do?"

"Take a look at this novel." The Doctor tossed it to her.

"I can't read it. It's all symbols. Have you turned the translation off?"

"Yes, I have; and believe me, I've done you a favour. That book is the most appalling nonsense from start to finish. The author's a positive misogynist, and there's one scene — that one in the refectory, you remember, Lucie?"

"I remember," Lucie said darkly.

"In my opinion it verges on the obscene."

"You've read it, then?" Victoria asked, sounding intrigued despite her resolution to be miserable.

"I'm afraid so."

"I read it too," Lucie said. "At least, I skimmed bits. No way it was written by any sort of lady. I'd bet money the author was a bloke, and if I ever meet him I'll tie him to a chair and... well, he can just see how he likes it, that's all I'm saying."

"No wonder you haven't made much progress," Victoria said. "By the sound of things, you've been spending all afternoon reading unsuitable novels."

"A classic, Per said it was. If that's a classic I don't want to know what they think counts as sleazy."

"No." The Doctor picked up a damp rag and began to wipe out a scribbled chalk grid. "Artistically at least, this Empire is not a bright hope for the future."

"We know what the future holds," Victoria said. "Please can we not mention it again?"

"Sorry."

"So, this novel. What should I do with it?"

"Break the letters into pairs. Keep a count of how many of each pair you see." The Doctor wiped out more space. "Lucie, can you write out the alphabet for Victoria? In a line across here, and vertically down here."

Lucie picked her way between the chalked notes. "Here we go," she said. "Squiggle, lollipop, coathanger..."

*

Exactly how late it was, Lucie wasn't sure. The palace watchmen rang bells every so often, but she hadn't managed to work out the relationship between the number of dings and what time it actually was. All she knew was that it was dark outside, and the flickering oil-light was doing her head in. Her stupid skirt was covered with chalk dust, and so were her hands, making them dry and painful. The grids she was drawing and redrawing were getting wobblier each time.

She looked across at Victoria, who was working on her own grid: a large area of the floor, with each square containing a number of tick marks. Each square, Lucie knew, corresponded to a different pair of letters, and the number of ticks matched how often they showed up in the novel. The hope was that if you saw a pair of letters several times in the code, they might match one of the frequently-used pairs in Victoria's grid. Then you guessed what word they might be part of, using the dictionary — hampered, of course, by the fact that they all just looked like random hieroglyphs.

Twice that evening, Lucie had been scribbling down her list of meaningless symbols when the Doctor had snapped his fingers and said "We've got something." Then the Doctor had let the TARDIS translate for them, seeing the meaning in what had been just a string of squiggles. Unfortunately, while the two decoded letters had provided ample evidence that Governor Harkett was embezzling funds for some private project, they had failed to turn up anything at all about his kidnapping activities.

For what felt like the millionth time, Lucie scrubbed out two letters from the grid on her left and wrote in two others. The chalk slipped out of her hand and rolled away; she made a grab for it and lost her balance. Her flailing hand hit something hot. There was a flare of light and a _whoomph._ Looking where her hand had landed, she saw the overturned oil lamp, the burning oil, the flames spreading across the floor and licking at her dress...

"Lucie, don't move!"

The Doctor was towering over her, beating at the flames with the wet cloths he'd been using to wipe up the chalk, then wrapping her in his coat and rolling her to and fro. It made her feel like a little girl, a toddler who couldn't be trusted.

"Victoria, make sure those papers don't catch," the Doctor called over his shoulder. "Lucie, are you hurt?"

"Don't think so. Reckon you got to me in time." She stood up and looked herself up and down. Her dress hadn't been improved by the scorch marks, but it didn't seem to be smouldering or anything, and the spilt oil had been effectively smothered by the cloth. Victoria was crawling on the floor, gathering up papers that had been swept off their table by the Doctor's hasty passage.

"I think you were lucky. There probably wasn't much oil left in that lamp." The Doctor looked down at his two companions. "Right, you two. Bed. You're obviously in no condition for any more cryptanalysis tonight."


	8. Head For The Hills

When she heard Lucie get up, Victoria stopped pretending to be asleep, and sat up in bed. The matter had been preying on her mind since she woke, and Victoria didn't feel she could put it off any longer.

"Miss Miller."

It seemed to take a few seconds for Lucie to realise she was being addressed.

"Oh," she said. "Yeah?"

"I must apologise for my behaviour to you yesterday."

Lucie seemed more concerned with struggling into her dress. "What?"

"When I hit you. Quite apart from my abominable rudeness, I might have knocked you off the tower and done you who knows what kind of harm. Please believe me when I say that I am very, very sorry."

"OK. Just don't do it again." Lucie jumped up and down a few times, trying to shake out the creases in her dress.

"I won't," Victoria said, but if Lucie heard she gave no answer.

*

The code was definitely getting easier to crack, with practice. Victoria and Lucie were both beginning to recognise particular character groupings, presumably the local equivalents of words like "the" and "and". It also helped that all the letters had similar subject matter, and whoever had written them didn't seem to have had much imagination regarding vocabulary. Letter after letter yielded up its secrets, each quicker than the last.

"'I rely upon your absolute secrecy,'" the Doctor translated. "Why don't we just assume all the letters end with that? It'll give us about half the letters in every pair of keywords straight off the bat."

"Those keywords are all things like 'impending triumph', too," Lucie said, looking up from another chalked grid. They'd had to send out for more chalk, and fresh supplies of paper to write down the translations. "Sounds like the sort of thing Americans do. You know, Operation Impending Triumph and all that."

"Yes," the Doctor said. "Hubristic. But if you were a soldier, would you prefer to be serving in Operation Inevitable Disaster?"

Victoria looked worried. "Is that what we are serving in?"

"Before a disaster, you like to think it's avoidable," the Doctor said. "Afterwards, you really want it to have been inevitable; you yearn to be told that there was nothing you could have done... Lucie, your latest guess reads to me as 'I reply upon your tubular serenity.' You can't be too far off the next code word."

*

"'The goods will be transferred,'" the Doctor read. "Go on, guess."

"'Under cover of dark,'" Victoria and Lucie chorused.

"Got it in one. 'The work goes well, and the end is in plain sight. Ten in twelve of the subjects died in minutes, the remaining two by dawn. I shall expect you, as agreed, for discussions regarding the other matter. I rely upon your absolute secrecy.' And there you have it."

"We've done it!" Lucie punched the air. "We are the greatest!" She looked at the other two. "Come on, where's the celebrations?"

"None of this actually says where Dornan might be," Victoria pointed out. "Whatever these letters are about, there's no hint about anything like a kidnapping."

"But kidnapping Dornan's got to be part of the whole plan thing, right? I mean, he wouldn't kidnap her just for fun, and he wouldn't have two different plans on the go at once."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Well, I think Lucie has a point," the Doctor said. "We only have this thread to pull on. Let's see what unravels if we keep at it."

"How?" Lucie asked. "It's not like we can go and poke about in all the places in these letters, 'cos they don't actually mention any places. It's all just nods and winks."

"We shall have to consult someone with local knowledge. Major Tercoryn, if he's around, or your friend Per."

"He isn't my friend. And I reckon the only local knowledge he's interested in is finding out what I wear under this." She pointed at her despised dress. "Which, for the record, is something like half a ton of petticoats and corsets and things. How do they ever manage to kidnap girls round here? You'd need a crane."

"They seem to manage well enough," Victoria said.

"Yes." The Doctor rose to his feet. "And I think we should obtain our local knowledge as quickly as possible. If this is Skaro, it's no wonder they're all so worried about the rainy season. It gets pretty wild here, at times."

"Don't tell me," Lucie said. "One of those times is in the next day or two, right?"

"Almost certainly."

"Fantastic." She stood up. "Let's get a move on, then."

*

The Viceroy placed the last decrypted letter back on the heap on his desk.

"I am impressed, Doctor," he said. "In the time it took you to decode all these letters, my clerks had not succeeded in finding so much as one single keyword."

"Thank you." The Doctor bowed. "I should point out that my young friends here were both invaluable to the process."

"Then they also have done well." He didn't pause for an answer, or indeed give any hint that he acknowledged the presence of Victoria and Lucie. "But, as you must realise, you have not yet discovered where my daughter is. How do you propose to proceed?"

"Before I answer that question, I should like to hear what progress Major Tercoryn has made." The Doctor examined his cuffs. "Yesterday, he assured me that he was undertaking the investigation at Umberscar. I would hope by now to see either a report, or the Major himself."

The Viceroy beckoned a guard over, and whispered something in his ear. The Doctor stood silently and patiently. Victoria, standing a pace or so behind him, glanced across at Lucie, who was fidgeting in what she considered a most unladylike manner. She looked around at the walls, the banners, the guards. They looked so solid, as if they would last for ever. But then, so had the walls of her home, until the Daleks came. One day, they'd come here, and all this power and arrogance would crumble to dust before them. Or maybe they were here already. They had time machines, didn't they? They could have travelled into their own past, hiding behind the scenes, whispering their ideas in ambitious men's ears, until they created the world that would create them...

She realised that the Major was approaching. His uniform was clean and tidy; his face, inscrutable as ever, showed no signs of tiredness.

"My lord," he said.

"Tercoryn, the Doctor suggests that you and he pool information. These are the coded letters. He has successfully determined what method was used, and the key words."

Lucie coughed, no doubt at the way her part in the affair was being glossed over, but refrained from speaking.

"May I?" The Major picked up the letters, and read them. It seemed to Victoria that he was deliberately taking his time, perhaps to ensure that he missed no detail.

"Your conclusions?" the Viceroy asked, once he had finished.

"My lord, it is plain that Harkett has been engaged in serious irregularities."

"What about—" Lucie began. The Doctor held up a warning hand; to Victoria's surprise, she took the hint and fell silent.

"If I may continue?" The Major favoured her with a curt bow. "None of the Governor's staff knew where he had gone on the night of his death — nor, indeed, on previous nights when he went out riding alone. Enquiries have been set in motion among the townspeople and the peasantry. It is thought that, customarily, he headed in the direction of the coast.

"These letters suggest that he was misusing the funds entrusted to him by the Empire, for the purchase of unknown materials. Some of these figures, however, are suggestive. Here, a quantity of money intended for a guard post is diverted to a seller of corn. And the price is a multiple of a day's feed for a cavalry mount. Quite a large multiple, too. Enough to sustain a sizeable troop for several days, or a smaller troop for longer. In this letter, the sale of contraband is arranged to cover earlier defalcations. This contraband must have been previously cached at some location within half a day's ride of Umberscar." He unfolded a map, and scrawled a circle on it. "Somewhere within this area."

"If he had any sense of secrecy, I'd check the villages along these roads," the Doctor said, leaning over the map. "But seeing what we know of him so far, I'd also inquire up in the hills. The exact opposite direction from the way the townspeople think he went."

"A distinct possibility. He would be so eager to leave a path pointing away from where he was going — but a path can be walked in either direction. Now, considering that several of these letters suggest the transfer of large quantities of material, or even livestock, we should limit ourselves to settlements where the appearance of a number of wagons would occasion no surprise..."

Unable to see the map or reread the letters, Victoria shivered slightly, and tried not to think about Daleks. The image now in her head was of Governor Harkett, riding slowly home in the early morning, not noticing the extra pillars on the bridge until the word 'EXTERMINATE' cut through the dawn air like a serrated knife. She tried to think back. There hadn't been any Dalek trails in the mud of the road, she was sure of it. But that didn't mean their agents couldn't have done the deed, duped like Professor Maxtible, or controlled like Arthur Terrall, or blackmailed into doing terrible things, as her poor father had been.

"Are you all right?" Lucie asked suddenly.

Victoria looked up, realising her eyes were full of tears.

"I am—" she began.

"You're not, I can see you're not. Look, guys, I'm taking her out for a breath of air, all right?"

Before anyone could answer, she had her arm in Victoria's and was leading her firmly down the hall. A couple of soldiers started forward, but returned to their posts, presumably at some gesture from the Viceroy.

By the time they'd left the hall, crossed the wide corridor outside, and found a wooden bench to sit on, Victoria had managed to get her nightmare fears under control.

"I'm sorry you've been put to this trouble on my account," she said.

"Don't worry." Lucie squeezed her arm. "Any excuse to get out of there. My feet are killing me. Why that Viceroy bloke can't tell his men to bring in some chairs I don't know. And at least out here we can talk."

"We can?" Victoria glanced around. There were two guards nearby, but perhaps if they kept their voices low it would be all right.

"Don't see why not." Lucie looked at her. "You sure you're feeling better now, Vicky?"

"I think so. And please don't abbreviate my name."

"Okay, then. Victoria. Look, anything I can do..."

"I don't think there's anything anyone can do. It's just irrational fear. Foreboding." She shivered. "Deliver us from evil."

"Evil?"

"There's enough here and to spare. That Major. He threatened someone with torture, just as I might offer someone a cup of tea. And he meant it, I know he did. And the way he talked of peasants."

"Or that Viceroy. Thinking of his daughter as a bargaining chip."

"Exactly. I keep thinking that the Daleks are around here, somewhere, even if I can't see them."

"You know," Lucie said slowly. "The first time I met the Doctor, there was this woman trying to build Daleks. She was a loony. And this lot? I reckon they'd do the same, if they got the chance. The perfect killing machines."

"And they wouldn't realise until too late just what that meant." Victoria shivered again. "But to return to the Major. I'm sure he resents our presence. If we make the slightest mistake, he'd be only too glad to throw us into the dungeons."

"Then we'd better not make mistakes. Keep our mouths shut. Looks like women are supposed to do that round here anyway."

"Seen and not heard. It's so frustrating when you go somewhere and everyone treats you as just a piece of the Doctor's luggage."

Victoria realised Lucie was looking at her curiously. She could guess why. For a few seconds, then, she'd felt like the old Victoria, the one who'd dreamed of adventure, who'd been ready to fight back, who'd been able to get a decent night's sleep. But the mood had passed as quickly as it arrived.

"Do you feel up to going back in?" Lucie asked.

Victoria considered the question. The sense of dread she'd felt ever since she'd learned they were on Skaro was still gnawing at her, but it seemed to have diminished a little.

"I think—" she began.

The double doors of the hall opened, and the Doctor came out.

"There you are," he said. "We have a coach journey to make. Come and pack."

"All of us?" Lucie asked. "No-one stays behind this time?"

"The Viceroy seems a little more confident of our good faith since we decoded those letters for him. And it's quite a bit further, so if someone got left behind they might be kicking their heels for days."

"Where are we going?" Victoria asked.

"Tarnos Falls. It's a small town up in the hills. The Major and I agree that it's the most likely place to look. Even if we leave now, though, we won't get there till after nightfall."

*

It was dark outside the carriage, and the thickening clouds blocked out any sign of stars or moon. If Skaro had a moon, which Lucie didn't know. Perhaps the astronomy textbook would have said, but at the time she'd only been interested in finding out the name of the planet.

At the moment, she was wondering how much further they had to go. The first few miles had been in daylight, across relatively flat terrain, but the road was now climbing steadily. She tried to think back to the maps she'd seen. They must be going up the valley above Umberscar. That would be what the Major had meant by a path pointing in the opposite direction. Up the river into the hills, rather than down it to the distant sea.

Earlier in the journey, Victoria had tried to pass the time by reading, despite the fact that the only available book was the copy of 'The Towers of Torvento' that Lucie had borrowed earlier. It hadn't taken long for her to give up, pleading travel-sickness. That didn't surprise Lucie; in her opinion, that book was enough to make anyone want to throw up.

The Major, who'd apparently been dozing in a corner, suddenly opened his eyes. A few seconds later, the Doctor leaned forward.

"What...?" Lucie's voice died away as she realised the other two were listening. Among the rumbles, clatters and squeaks that had filled the carriage since they set out, other sounds could be heard. Hoofbeats. Approaching rapidly, too.

There were cries from the men outside their carriage, answering shouts, and then the steady rhythm of their journey began to slow. The creatures pulling them were reined in, and the coach ground to a protracted halt. The sounds of hooves outside suddenly seemed louder and closer.

"All around us," Tercoryn whispered. "Cavalry. Twenty or so. Those grain rations... damn!"

"At least we know we're looking in the right area," the Doctor replied, equally quietly.

Before anyone could say any more, both doors were pulled abruptly open. Men, wearing dark cloaks, and with the lower halves of their faces covered by scarves, were aiming longarms into the carriage. One, presumably the leader, glanced in, as if summing up the situation. Then he caught hold of Victoria by the arm, and dragged her bodily out with him. Her terrified screams were suddenly cut off.

Lucie half-rose to her feet, but before she could do so, someone else had grabbed her, and she was being pulled out through the other door. She tried to break free, or to kick, or just to throw her attacker off balance, but, tangled in her dress, she could do nothing. Before she'd had a chance to do more than draw breath, a gag was thrust into her mouth. Struggling vainly in the hands of her attackers, she felt her hands forced together and tied, then her feet. Then she was picked up like a sack of potatoes, slung over someone's shoulder, and carried, still squirming, through the dark and cold to something that, in the feeble light of the carriage's lamps, was just a dark shape.

She was roughly thrown down, landing in what felt like straw. A tarpaulin was dumped on top of her. Then a whip cracked, and the familiar sound of hooves and wheels surrounded her once more. She was travelling again, however unwillingly.


	9. Kidnapped

Lucie had thought the bed at the Viceroy's palace was pretty bad. What she'd woken up in now was considerably worse; not so much a bed, as a heap of decaying bales of cloth. She had a nasty suspicion that it had previously been occupied by mice, or whatever creature Skaro had instead.

"Miss Miller?"

Blearily, she opened her eyes, to see Victoria bending over her.

"Miss Miller, are you hurt?"

Lucie put her hand to her head.

"Feels like I was out clubbing last night and overdid things," she said. "What happened? I remember the cart stopped and then someone picked me up. I suppose they brought us here." She rubbed her head again, then her legs. "Reckon I've got a few bruises from the journey, but nothing's broken." She looked up at Victoria. "Never mind about me, what about you? You're as white as a sheet."

"Did you see what happened to the Doctor?"

"Not a thing. Sorry."

Victoria let out a sob. Lucie tried to sit up and assure her that the Doctor would be all right, that he always was; but the sudden movement made her head spin, and she fell back into the heap of rotten fabric.

"Have... have you been awake long?" she asked.

"Most of the night." Victoria wiped her eyes. "I couldn't sleep. I was so afraid that someone was going to come for us. Or some kind of creature. Maybe rats." She shuddered.

"And you've been sitting up all night waiting for them? No wonder you look done in." Lucie sat up again, more gently. "Were there any?"

"I heard scratching in the wainscotting," Victoria said bleakly.

"Well, thanks for keeping them off me." Lucie disentangled herself from the last of the fabric, and dusted herself down. "I mean that. I really, really, can't stand rats."

It didn't take long to take stock of their situation. Their prison was completely devoid of furniture; its only contents were the bales on which Lucie had passed her uncomfortable night. In one wall was a locked door, in another a small window. Looking through this gave a view down into a cobbled courtyard, surrounded on all sides by brick buildings with an industrial appearance. From the look of things, they were several floors up, and the building opposite was even taller. Its windows were tightly shuttered, but smoke was drifting from the chimney stacks at each end, so the place was still in use.

While they were still looking, the door was flung open, and they turned. A soldier, wearing the usual orange uniform, came in, carrying a tray.

"Ladies," he said. "I am instructed to offer you Governor Harkett's apologies—"

"Harkett?" Lucie asked incredulously. Victoria laid a hand on her arm.

"His apologies for what you have undergone, and for the inadequacy of your accommodation. You are now to consider yourselves his prisoners. This should only be for a day or two, but should it prove to be longer, more appropriate quarters will be found for you."

He set the tray on the ground, there being no furniture to speak of, and turned as if to leave.

"One moment," Victoria said. "When we were kidnapped, what happened to the people we were with? The Major, and the Doctor? Were they— hurt?"

"They were allowed to continue with their journey, after a suitable interval. Enough to make sure they did not try to pursue us. That is all."

He left, closing and bolting the door behind him.

"If he's telling the truth the Doctor's still alive," Lucie said. "Makes sense. If we're being kept as hostages, well, he's the only person we'd be any value to."

"Maybe not." Victoria glanced nervously around.

"Well, who else, then?"

"Someone who wants to know the progress of the Doctor's investigation?"

"Could be. What did he mean, saying Harkett's got us locked up? He's dead."

"But that man mightn't know that yet. I wasn't sure how he'd react if we told him."

"I see." Lucie looked at the tray. "I suppose this is breakfast. Looks pretty awful to me. What is it, pigswill?"

"We should try to eat it, nonetheless."

"What, because of being polite?"

"Because we need to keep our strength up," Victoria said. "So we can escape."

"Escape?"

"I admit that I am ignorant of kidnapping etiquette in these parts. It may well be that there is a convention that victims do not try to escape. If there is, I see no need for us to follow it."

She sat down, picked up the wooden spoon she'd been given, and began to eat.

*

"The question," Victoria said, after they'd forced down as much of the breakfast as they could bear, "is how we can escape from here. The door's bolted on the outside, so there's no chance of picking the lock."

"Who said anything about picking locks?"

"I can. At least, I've done it before. Well, once."

"How about just smashing the door?" Lucie suggested. "It's not like it's a proper prison door. This is just an old storeroom or something. Those panels look pretty flimsy."

"We'd make too much noise." Victoria walked back to the window. "And I don't think we could fit through this, either."

"Not in these skirts. And if you did get through you'd probably break your neck trying to climb down." Lucie patted Victoria on the shoulder. "Look, it was a good idea, but I don't see any way we can get out of here."

"We must try. It's clear that if the Doctor and the Major aren't— if they are still at liberty, it must only be for some fiendish purpose of our captors."

"I know! It's just—" With an inarticulate sound of frustration, Lucie kicked at the side wall of their impromptu prison, knocking off a sizeable chunk of plaster. Beneath, rough wooden slats were visible.

"You were right." Victoria bent down. "This isn't a proper cell at all. The wall's only lath and plaster. We should be able to break through fairly easily, and not draw attention."

Lucie couldn't resist a smile. "Brute force and ignorance wins again."

*

While removing enough of the wall to get through wasn't impossible, it certainly wasn't easy, particularly for two people with no proper tools or carpentry skills who were trying not to make a noise. The first few laths were the hardest, resulting in scratched and bleeding hands for both Lucie and Victoria. Once the hole was started, though, they could use the first bits of wood they'd removed to lever more pieces out. Even so, it felt as if they'd been trying for hours before they managed to crawl through the hole, the jagged edges reducing their unwieldy skirts to shreds as they did so.

The room they emerged in appeared to be on the corner of the building, with two of the small windows. One showed pretty much the same view as before, while the other looked out over two parallel watercourses and the forest beyond. The nearer channel was obviously artificial, straight as a ruler and edged with stone blocks; the further looked like a natural river. A wooden bridge spanned both channels, its nearer end running into a gatehouse at one end of the courtyard, while at the far end a rutted track wound away through the trees.

"This factory must be run by water power," Victoria said. "That's the mill race. They'll take the water from the river somewhere upstream."

"That's why all these factories are up in the hills, isn't it? So they can run their machines off the water. Don't they have steam engines?"

"Maybe not. Or perhaps they haven't got a good source of coal here... Look!"

Lucie followed Victoria's pointing finger.

"Is that someone in the woods?"

"I'm sure it is." Victoria fumbled with the catch, and opened the window. "I think it's the Major."

The Major, if that was who it was, was lurking in the shadow of a tree, his grey uniform making him almost undetectable. If it hadn't been for a momentary flicker of light from something long and cylindrical in his hand, they wouldn't have noticed him.

"What's he got there?" Lucie asked. The window was too narrow for both of them to look out side by side, so she was crouching on the floor, her head only just above the sill. It was restricting her field of view.

"A telescope, I think." Victoria waved at the Major, who seemed to notice the movement; he raised the telescope to his eye again, and aimed it in their direction. One look later, and he had disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

"Now where's he gone?" Lucie wondered.

"To get help, I sincerely hope." Victoria closed the window. "The question is, can we do anything while he's doing that?"

"What, like escape? 'Cos it's pretty pointless to go to all that trouble to get out of our cell, and sit around next door waiting for someone to catch us."

"Let's explore, then."

They crept out into the corridor, but the next three rooms they investigated were just like the one they'd been locked in: empty, save for heaps of foul-smelling, decayed cloth. In the third room, Victoria had accidentally knocked a box over, dislodging a number of chittering, six-legged reptiles which seemed to be what Skaro had instead of rodents. Even after they'd run from the room and bolted the door behind them, Lucie could feel her heart pounding and a cold sweat on her brow.

"I nearly screamed," she admitted. "We could just have done with that, couldn't we? We'd have been up to here in guards."

"I still think we should continue looking," Victoria said firmly. "You never know. There might be something different in the next room."

"Probably crocodiles, the way things are going. Did you notice, those mouse things looked like little crocodiles? Ugh!"

"I noticed." Victoria pushed the next door open. "Oh. This is interesting."

This storeroom seemed to be in active use. Rather than the decay and filth of the other rooms in the corridor, it was clean and tidy, with a neat stack of crates against one wall. Lucie lifted the lid off, and pulled out an orange jacket.

"It's from one of those uniforms," she said. "This must be where they make them."

"This could easily be a mill," Victoria agreed. "Start with cotton, or wool, or whatever they have here, and turn it into cloth. And then they make the uniforms from it."

"There isn't anyone here doing that, though." Lucie looked out of the window, which overlooked the inner courtyard of the mill. "Just soldiers. And that building looks all boarded-up."

"Perhaps it's the weekend. Or everyone's gone home because of the rainy season."

"That reminds me, what about the rain?" Lucie peered at the sky. "Don't want to worry you, but it's coming over pretty cloudy."

"Then we need to hurry."

"Yeah, but hurry and do what? What we need's some sort of distraction. Then we might stand a chance if we make a break for it."

Victoria grabbed her by the arm. "The horses. Or whatever they call those creatures. Open the stable door and turn them loose. That'll throw the place into turmoil."

Lucie looked across the courtyard, to where half-a-dozen beaked, reptilian steeds were peering out of their stalls.

"We'd never get over there," she said. "Someone'd notice us. It's not like we're inconspicuous."

"But we could be."

"How?"

Victoria, for the first time since Lucie had seen her, looked almost enthusiastic, as if she'd uncovered some long-buried instinct for adventure.

"We dress as soldiers," she said. "There must be enough coats and trousers and things to fit us in all this lot. We put them on and walk across the courtyard. If anyone sees us — and it ought only to be out of the corner of their eye — they won't think anything special. And if they do catch us, we can at least run."

"Which we can't in dresses. That's a good idea, Vicky— Victoria." Lucie looked down at her own ragged, stained dress. "Apart from anything else, this is feeling pretty lived-in, if you know what I mean."

"Don't worry, I do. Let's see if we can find all the right bits here."


	10. There Was A Jolly Miller

Victoria was trying, very hard, not to think about how she was walking. Inevitably, if you tried to walk 'normally', you ended up drawing attention to yourself in the most preposterous manner. She kept her eyes firmly on the stable door. Beside her, she could hear Lucie's breathing, fast and shallow, but didn't dare look at her. She felt like a fly, crawling across a sheet of paper, with spiders lurking on all sides. Her borrowed uniform was no comfort. Being new, it was horribly itchy and uncomfortable. Moreover, Lucie had given it as her opinion that even with their disguises, they still looked nothing like soldiers, and everything like two buxom young women in uniforms — not that she'd used the word 'buxom', but the words she had used had been equally plain in their meaning.

Fifteen more paces. Twelve. Seven...

"You there!"

For what felt like eternity, Victoria was rooted to the spot, feeling the blood drain from her face. Then, as boots started to pound on the cobbles behind her, she realised what she had to do. She broke into a run, reached the first stall, and flung it open. Lucie was somewhere on her left, fumbling with the latch of another stall.

"Stop them!"

A musket fired. Victoria flinched, but no bullet came near her; perhaps it was a warning shot, perhaps just bad aim. She forced herself to ignore it. The latch of the next stall was under her hand; she pulled it back.

"Hold your fire!" another voice shouted. More feet were running, to and fro. Then the third latch was open, and she turned round. Men were running into the courtyard, sabres drawn, cutting off the path back to the building they'd come from. Not giving herself time to think, she slapped the animal in the stall beside her, as hard as she could, and ducked behind the door as she flung it open. The beast charged out with a terrifying howl, causing the men to scatter this way and that. Others, spooked by the noise, followed suit.

Lucie grabbed her hand. "Quick. This way."

There was a door standing open, on their side of the courtyard. It led into the tall brick building opposite the one they'd been imprisoned in. Some of the men now milling about in the courtyard must have come from there, because it had definitely been shut before. As they ducked in, another musket ball whizzed past their heads and embedded itself in the doorframe.

Pausing only to bolt the door behind them, the pair fled past the base of a staircase, through a pair of double doors, and into the building proper. All the windows were shuttered, and the only lighting came from oil lamps screened by mesh. In the dimness, they dodged between huge, lumpy pieces of machinery.

"There's got to be other ways in," Lucie said. "There's another door at the other end of this building. I remember seeing it."

They hurried along the length of the building, through an identical pair of doors, into a lobby that was the mirror image of the one they'd arrived in. Its outer door was shut, but not bolted; Lucie shot both the bolts.

"Now I've locked us in, probably with a lot of soldiers," she said. "I don't see this escape going anywhere."

Victoria peered through a crack between two of the shutters.

"They're still trying to catch those creatures," she said. "But we can't go out there now. The courtyard's full of men. Some of them are wearing those cloaks and scarves, like the ones who kidnapped us."

"That Major was talking about grain rations. Just before we were kidnapped, I mean. He said that a small troop—"

"—could be fed for some time on the quantity purchased," the Major's voice said.

The two spun round. Tercoryn had emerged from the shadows under the staircase.

"Major!"

"What happened?"

"Have you seen the Doctor?"

"Is he all right?"

The Major held up his hands.

"We've been trying to track you two down," he said. "There were several reports of carts moving late at night. We split up to check them. The Doctor followed the most promising lead, which appeared to implicate a gunpowder factory some miles from here. It seems likely that this was a deliberate red herring."

"We saw you outside," Victoria said. "We tried to create a distraction."

"You succeeded. I turned my coat and slipped in." He opened his coat, revealing that it was double-sided. The inside was orange, the same colour as the other soldiers' uniforms.

"So now you're here, you're going to get us out, right?" Lucie asked.

"Wrong. Since you are here, and Harkett's private army is here, it is almost certain that the Viceroy's daughter is here, too." He drew a bulky pistol from his belt. "We shall investigate."

"But what about all those men outside?"

"Our investigation must necessarily be hasty. I take it you discovered nothing on this floor?"

"Not a thing," Victoria said.

"Then you two check the basement," — he indicated the downward continuation of the staircase — "and meet me on the next floor up."

"What if we find anything?"

"Call me."

The intrepid duo advanced nervously down the stairs. The sounds coming from the courtyard were chaotic, suggesting that recapturing the animals was proving a lengthy process. No-one else seemed to be moving in the mill itself.

The basement was, like the other rooms in the building, lit by a few oil lamps. Victoria briefly wondered who kept these lamps topped up and burning, and decided it must be one of the soldiers' duties. In their flickering, uncertain light, it was possible to make out a large cogwheel on the end wall. At the twelve o'clock position, it was engaged with a smaller pinion that led to an upward shaft. To one side of it was a device that Victoria remembered her father showing her, long ago: a triangular frame with small spheres on its two lower corners. A Watt governor. The one she'd seen before had been spinning, but this, like the rest of the machinery, was motionless.

The rest of the room seemed to be intended for the use of the engineers who kept the mechanism in order. Along one wall was a workbench, neatly stacked with familiar-looking tools and smaller pieces of machinery, while more of the space was given over to larger bits of broken or obsolete equipment.

"What happens if I turn this?" Lucie said.

'This' was a big metal wheel a little further along the end wall, its wooden handle dark and polished with use. Its rim passed through a complicated locking mechanism, apparently designed to ensure that, if it was turned, it would certainly not be by accident.

"I don't know," Victoria said. "But by the look of it, turning it could have serious consequences."

"Good. I could just do with serious consequences now." Lucie fumbled with the latch until it clicked open, then tried to push the handle one way, then the other.

"I think it's moving," she said. "Lend us a hand."

"Are you sure this is a wise idea?"

"I'm not asking for a pigging lecture on prudence!" Lucie snapped. "Just help me do this and you can tell me what a bad idea it was later."

Victoria looked hurt, but nevertheless took hold of the handle and tugged in the same direction as Lucie. The wheel began to turn, smoothly and silently. On the other side of the wall, the sounds of flowing water could be heard, faint at first, but quickly becoming a rushing torrent. Then they were joined by the rumble of machinery. The large cogwheel began to rotate, as did the vertical shaft it drove. The Watt governor started to turn as well, the metal globes at the ends of its arms rising as the centrifugal force sent them outwards and upwards.

"This must control a sluice," Victoria said. "We're letting water into the millrace."

"So now the waterwheel's turning? Well, I s'pose it might be a distraction, for someone with attention deficit disorder."

They kept turning the wheel until, with a thud that jarred their arms, it came to a stop and refused to go any further in that direction. The sounds of rushing water were now all around them, echoing through the mill, and the cast-iron shaft was rotating quite rapidly.

"That's it," Victoria said. "The sluice must be fully open."

"What does that thing do?" Lucie asked, pointing at the Watt governor.

"It regulates the speed of the mechanism, to keep it within limits. If it goes too fast there might be damage."

"Like the sound of damage. Damage is good. Can we smash it?"

Victoria winced. "I suppose you could try to disconnect it. It would probably have been easier before we opened the sluice, when it wasn't all running."

"Spoilsport. I'll just have to make do with this." Lucie picked up a length of timber, and thrust it into the governor, trying to push it into the triangle of rods that held the globes. The beam vibrated wildly, there were a number of very nasty crunching noises, the other end of the wood was whipped out of her hands and smashed against the wall, and something in the governor snapped. It began to spin faster and faster, the spheres on it rising higher and higher until they were flung out at right-angles to the shaft that drove it.

"There you are," she said. "Disconnected. Now where's all this damage?"

They listened, but heard only the rumble of machinery and the roar of water.

"Must be tougher than they thought," Lucie grumbled. "Come on, let's tell the Major there's nothing down here."

*

The other floors of the mill didn't take very long to search; even though they were shuttered and oil-lit, they were laid out so logically that there was nothing to hide. Though the waterwheel was now turning, the various machines it drove were almost all quiescent. Each one had a lever at the end, which seemed to disengage it from the overhead drive shafts. Lucie experimentally gave one of the levers a tug, and a machine with row after row of spindles clattered into noisy life.

"Don't do that!" The Major pushed the lever back. "Those things are dangerous. You could hurt yourself."

They continued, walking between rows of mechanical looms, colossal vats, seven or eight feet high and wide in proportion, and other devices none of them knew the purpose of. But by the time they reached the top landing, it was plain that there was nothing here to find.

"Listen!" The Major put gestured for silence. With the mill full of the sound of water and machinery, it was difficult to make anything out, but then they heard footsteps, approaching cautiously up the staircase.

"Those soldiers," Victoria said. "We're trapped."

"Back to the other staircase?" Lucie asked, but with no great hope.

"If they've any sense they'll have put men on both," the Major replied grimly.

"Then is there somewhere we can hide?"

"There aren't any hiding places. You've just proved that..." The Major looked around. "Except— that's curious."

"What?" Victoria asked.

"This landing's narrower than the others. Look. At that end, the wall's closer."

The three hurried over. A few taps on the wall were enough to convince them that it was certainly not solid; by the sound of things, it was made of wood, with a thin skim of plaster to make it match the other walls. And from the noise it made when tapped, there was a fair amount of space behind it.

Victoria ran her hands over the plaster.

"Is there a secret panel somewhere?" she wondered.

"Kor knows. I don't." The Major squinted at the join where the fake wall met the floor. "If I had time and men we could break it down, but then those fellows chasing us would know where we were."

"They'll know anyway, won't they?" Lucie said.

"You have a point. And there isn't much time." The Major kicked hard at the wood. It boomed hollowly. He kicked again, and it cracked. A section swung inwards, a broken lock hanging forlornly from one edge. Behind it was a ladder, leading up.

"Follow me," the Major said, scrambling up. Lucie followed, then Victoria. She closed the panel, for what good it would do, and hurried up the ladder through a trapdoor. As soon as she was through it, the Major slammed it shut. Then, glancing around the cluttered, dusty roof space they found themselves in, he darted to a barrel, rolled it onto the trap, and set it on end, jammed between the trapdoor and the rafters.

"Now what?" Lucie said. "It's just an attic. Not like there's any way out."

"It's a secret attic, though," Victoria said. "There must be something up here, or why keep it a secret? And it's got lamps, so it isn't deserted."

Unlike the cavernous factory areas below, the attic didn't run the full length of the building. Not far from the trapdoor, a partition ran across the roof space, with a door in the middle.

The Major walked to the door, moving silently, and then flung it open.

"Come in," a man's voice said — a high, cracked voice. "Welcome to my humble dwelling. Come in, come in, all of you. Because I assure you, none of you are going to leave."


	11. The Rescue

The attic room was no better lit than the rest of the mill, but its contents differed sharply from those of the floors below. One side of it was laid out as a living area, with a spartan-looking bed, a lightweight table, and a chest of drawers that presumably contained clothing. On the other side was a long bench, crude and functional, stained with dark liquid and laden with bottles, beakers, and racks of test tubes. The contents seemed to have overflowed the bench, since it was surrounded by an array of further containers, some empty, others half-full, ranging in size from tiny bottles to hogsheads. At the edge of this area, standing on bricks set into the floor, was a small, glowing brazier, on which a retort was being heated, and making the air uncomfortably hot.

Perched on a stool, his attention flicking between the retort and his three visitors, was a skinny, elderly, unshaven man, wearing a shirt and trousers that by the looks of them had seen better days — probably better centuries.

"Well now," he said. "What have we here? Three foolish soldiers, prying into affairs that do not concern them." He peered through the fetid air, apparently realising that at least one of the trio was not what she seemed. "A woman? It seems that the Viceroy must be desperate, if he has run out of men and must rely upon mere girls."

He took a small vial from the bench, and carefully unstoppered it.

"Put that stupid pistol down," he said. "If you do not, you shall die now."

"You're bluffing," the Major replied.

"Am I?" With infinite care, the man tipped a droplet from the vial onto his brazier. With his other hand, he pulled a cloth out of a pocket of his ragged coat, and clapped it over his mouth. The air, already unpleasant, was filled with a new vapour, something that tore at the throat and filled the chest with racking pains. The Major, Victoria and Lucie all doubled over, coughing horribly.

"That was one drop," the man said, once the effect had passed a little and he could make himself heard. "A few more would undoubtedly kill you. As you see, I can protect myself against its effects: you cannot. And you dare not risk a shot. It would be heard by every soldier in this compound. Now put the gun down."

The Major nodded, and laid the pistol on the floor. At a further gesture, he pushed it away with his toe.

"Thank you." The man returned the vial to the bench. "Now tell me who you are, and why you are here when you obviously have no right to be."

"My name is Major Tercoryn. And I would not speak so hastily of rights. I bear the Viceroy's commission. I can travel anywhere in this province without let or hindrance."

The man cackled. "Fine words. But the Viceroy shall have to find himself another lackey. Perhaps you do not know who I am? My name is Kernis."

The Major nodded slowly. "You were sentenced to death, some years ago. And Harkett, however incompetent, could not have bungled your execution by accident. Therefore, he deliberately spared you, and brought you here to carry on your vile experiments."

"Ay, and he provided me with a roof over my head, the materials I needed, and the people to test my formulations on. You three will, of course, join their number. Behold!" He picked up a bottle, half-full of oily liquid. "This kills with a pinprick. When the Viceroy next calls on my good friend the Governor, a word or two of greeting, a quick handshake— the rest, you see, will quickly follow."

"Oh, no it won't," Lucie said. "'Cos Harkett's dead. Fell off his horse and broke his neck."

"You lie!"

"She is telling the truth," Victoria said.

"I saw his body myself," the Major added. "But if these ladies' word does not convince you, perhaps the official Imperial proclamation of his death will?"

He reached, slowly and carefully, into an inner pocket of his coat, and produced a roll of paper, sealed with wax and ribbon. He held it out, as if to give it to Kernis, and suddenly moved it sharply. There was an odd sound, something like a faraway detonation, and Kernis tumbled over backwards, a neat hole in his forehead.

"That deals with that," the Major said, extracting a small pistol with a long, bulky barrel from the scroll that had hidden it. He picked up his other gun, returned it to his belt, and methodically reloaded the pistol he'd fired.

"Now," he said. "What else have we here?"

Lucie followed him as he made for a door at the far end of the room. This door was bolted on the outside, with a small flap at eye level. He lifted the flap, chuckled, and unbolted the door.

The room beyond had the same style of furnishing: the same chest of drawers, the same military bed and table. Unlike the adjoining room, though, it was tidy, and well-lit by means of a window in the end wall. There were gestures towards comfort: a square of carpet, an easy chair, a shelf of books. And, having apparently just risen from the chair, a girl, about eighteen by her looks, with plaited dark hair and a decided resemblance to the Viceroy that made it abundantly clear who she must be.

The Major bowed. "My lady."

"Major Tercoryn."

The Major turned to Lucie. "My lady, this is Lucie Miller, who has been of some assistance to me in tracking you down. Lucie, this is the Lady Dornan." In a whisper, he added, "Curtsy."

"I guessed," Lucie muttered, bobbing her head and letting her knees bend slightly. "OK, so we've found her. Now how do we get her out of here?"

"I have a notion or two." The Major turned back to Dornan. "Do the soldiers ever come up here?"

"No," Dornan said. "The man Kernis was my jailer. He was the one who brought me food and water." She gestured at the debris of a meal on the table.

"Not sure I'd take anything from him," Lucie said. "All those chemicals he was playing with. Odds are he'd have given me a nice tasty arsenic stew even if he didn't mean to."

"So we're safe up here, at least for now," the Major mused. "But sooner or later, someone's going to want to check up on Kernis. We need to find a way out before he does. Might I inspect the room?"

Dornan waved a hand. The Major dropped to his hands and knees, looking first under the bed, then the chest of drawers. Lucie looked round, to make some comment to Victoria, and realised that she wasn't there.

She went back into the other room. A shadowy figure was bending over the brazier, which was now emitting clouds of smoke.

"Victoria?" she asked.

The figure turned round. It was Victoria, her eyes streaming from the smoke, and several smuts on her face.

"What on... on Skaro are you doing now?" Lucie asked her.

"I have just burnt that man's notes," Victoria said. "Hateful documents. Nothing but one recipe for death after another." She gestured at the rows of bottles. "I should like to destroy those as well, if I had the means."

"Wonder how Kernis got rid of stuff?" Lucie looked around. "Problem is, if any of these things start giving off fumes when you open them—"

With a start, she realised that she was having to raise her voice to be heard, nearly to the point of shouting. Not only was there rain drumming on the tiles, but the echoing roar of water in the millrace seemed to have got louder, as if only one floor separated them rather than the full height of the building. The rumble of the machinery, below, was also rising in pitch.

"I'll ask the Major," Lucie said, and returned to the erstwhile prison. The carpet had been rolled back, and the Major was on his knees, prying at the floorboards.

"'Scuse me," Lucie said. "But what d'you want done with all those chemicals  
of Kernis's? We can't work out how to get rid of them."

Dornan's eyes narrowed. "Get rid of them? But they could be of use to the Empire."

"Or poison anyone who touches them."

"Then have Kernis tortured. He'll talk."

"He won't. He's dead."

"Dead?" Dornan looked shocked. "You killed him? That was clumsy, Major."

"He was a condemned criminal," the Major said. "He'd cheated death for far too long."

"Then if he's dead, you must not touch those bottles. The risk is too great. Not all of those things are simple poisons. Some of them are diseases."

"That was what got him put away," the Major said, levering up a floorboard. "Ah. As I thought. There was a trapdoor at this end, at one time."

He turned his attention to the adjacent floorboard.

"Get everyone in here," he said, gesturing at Lucie.

Lucie once more went to the door, and beckoned. Victoria joined her, blinking in the daylight.

"Now," the Major said, laying the second board aside. "Keep your voices down. When the moment comes, I shall open the trap, and you will have to jump through."

He removed his jacket. Underneath, attached to his crossbelt, were several cloth-wrapped objects. He took one of them and unwrapped it, revealing a fragile-looking glass capsule.

With a finger to his lips, he pressed his ear to the floor, and remained in that pose for what felt like a full minute. Then, suddenly, the rumble of the mill wheel was joined by another sound, a screech of metal against metal.

"Now!" the Major mouthed, and kicked down into the gap where he'd removed the floorboards. Something fell away with a crash. The Major threw his glass capsule through the hole and counted to five; coughing and shouting could be heard from below, and smoke began to rise from the hole.

Moving swiftly, the Major lowered himself through the hole, and disappeared from view.

"Jump down, my lady!" his voice called up.

Dornan swallowed, sat on the edge of the hole, and lowered herself through. Her hands were visible gripping the edge for a few seconds, then they disappeared.

"Now the other two!"

"You first," Lucie suggested. Victoria, still looking pale and haggard, nodded, and lowered herself through the opening. As soon as her hands had disappeared, Lucie followed suit. The drop was some distance, but she managed to land without hurting herself.

They were on the landing at the other end of the mill. To nobody's surprise, it was the mirror-image of the one from which they'd ascended to the attic, currently full of slowly-dispersing smoke. Three soldiers lay on the ground, unconscious or dead.

The squealing mechanical noises from below, which had given them their element of surprise, ceased. So did the rumble of machinery. Somewhere below, there were a number of ominous thuds and the sound of wood giving way. The roaring of the millrace redoubled, but not enough to drown the sounds of footsteps in the adjoining room.

"Split up," the Major said. "You two, take that staircase. Try to draw them off. Dornan, with me."

Victoria lost no time in complying. They were two floors further down before Lucie caught up with her.

"Easy," she said, catching Victoria by the shoulder. "Just 'cos that bloke thinks we're here to distract the guards doesn't mean we've got to play along with him."

"But the guards are coming." Sure enough, there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, both above them and below.

"Yeah, but they're down there as well." Lucie dived through the nearest door, dragging Victoria with her.

The door turned out to give onto a rickety walkway, about ten feet off the floor, running through one of the rooms they'd searched earlier — the one with the colossal vats. Now Victoria and Lucie were above them, they could see that these were open-topped, full of dark liquid. Hooks hung from the ceiling above.

"I think this must be where they dye the fabric," Victoria whispered.

"Another time. Look, if anyone's waiting at the other end of this thing, we're trapped— hang on!"

The two grabbed the handrail as the building shuddered. Somewhere in the distance, orders were shouted, and there were the sounds of hurrying feet, getting further and further away; but no-one stepped onto the walkway, at either end.

Victoria looked around warily. "Perhaps they've given up on us."

"Or perhaps they've spotted the Major and they've all gone off after him. How does he think he's gonna get out of here? It's full of blokes with guns."

"Guns that won't work in the rain."

"Yeah, but they've got swords too."

More shouting, and confused coughing.

"More of those smoke bombs, perhaps? Perhaps he's leapt onto a charger, with Dornan in front of him, and ridden off, scattering the bombs to keep his pursuers at bay." She raised a weak smile. "Really, it sounds quite dashing. I'm sure the Major would never do anything so romantic."

"Yeah, he doesn't strike me as the Sir Lancelot type." Lucie listened, trying to pick out the sound of hooves from all the other noises echoing through the mill. "But we can't—"

Another tremor shook the building. This time, the walkway didn't hold; with a sound of rending wood and metal it snapped at one end, twisted, and collapsed, precipitating Victoria and Lucie into the nearest vat of liquid before they could react.


	12. Never Say Dye

Lucie, suddenly immersed, panicked. The liquid she'd fallen into was hot, uncomfortably so, and the mouthful of it she'd got had a harsh, bitter taste. It was probably poisonous; she tried not to swallow. Her clothes and shoes were already waterlogged, dragging her down. Desperately trying to remember what she'd been taught about this situation, she kicked her legs and tried to swim up, wherever 'up' was.

Abruptly, she surfaced, the air blissfully cool against her skin. She spat out the mouthful of dye, took a deep breath, and tried to open her eyes. They stung, and her vision was blurred and orange-tinted.

"Victoria?" she called.

There was no answer. In the uncertain, flickering light, with eyes that refused to stay open, she looked around. Something dark seemed to be floating on the water, moving feebly this way and that, with the occasional splash nearby. A shape briefly broke the surface, and for one agonising moment Lucie saw the undeniable outline of a hand.

Lucie struck out in that direction. Usually, she'd have said she was a good swimmer, but these were hardly ideal circumstances. Her progress to where Victoria was drowning seemed painfully slow. Victoria was still struggling, though, so she was still alive.

It took Lucie several attempts, once she'd reached Victoria, to catch hold of her and pull her up so she could breathe. She tried to remember how you were supposed to do lifesaving. Swim on your back, wasn't it, with the other person's head on your chest? She tried to get into position. Victoria was still moving, but feebly, trying to breathe in between coughing up mouthfuls of dye.

"It's all right," she tried to say. Whether Victoria heard her, she didn't know; her ears were probably full of the liquid. Trying to support her as best she could, Lucie looked around. It looked as if there was a handrail or a ladder or something on the side of the vat. She twisted round so they were pointing roughly in that direction, still trying to keep Victoria afloat.

"I'll get us out of here," she said. "Hang on, Victoria."

If swimming to Victoria's location had been hard, swimming back with her was nearly impossible. Several times Lucie felt the liquid close over her head, and each time it was harder to stop herself going under for good. Between the effort and the heat, it was becoming more and more difficult to move. Her arms and legs were aching with fatigue.

In the end, she only realised she'd reached the ladder when her head bumped against it. She grabbed hold of it, and pulled herself and Victoria up so their heads were clear of the dye. Then, supporting Victoria with her right hand and hanging on with her left, she managed to get her feet onto a lower rung. That was about all she could do. She'd never felt so tired, and she wondered if the vapour coming off the surface of the dye was poisonous.

"Miss Miller?" Victoria's voice sounded distant. Lucie shook her head, trying to get the stuff out of her ears.

"I'm here," she said, squeezing Victoria's shoulder. "Can you find the ladder?"

There was a pause, and then the weight Lucie was supporting lessened.

"I have it. I don't think I have the strength to climb it."

"Me neither. Maybe after a rest?"

"Perhaps." Victoria was overtaken by another coughing fit. "You saved my life. I nearly drowned again. Thank you."

"Yeah, well." Lucie wasn't sure what to say. "Try not to make a habit of it, OK?"

"I sometimes wonder if history is trying to correct itself. If my continued existence is some sort of irritant to it."

"What, you think, I dunno, the Universe is trying to drown you?"

"It's just an idle fancy." Victoria changed the subject with suspicious haste. "It was fortunate that you were able to rescue me. You're a good swimmer."

"That's down to Mr Baldwin at school. Proper misery, he was, but he knew his stuff. Had us all swimming up and down in pyjamas." Lucie squared her shoulders. "Feel up to making a move now?"

"I suppose we should try."

Victoria began to drag herself up the ladder, one rung at a time, with frequent rests. As soon as Victoria had passed her, Lucie followed, and discovered why. In the vat, their waterlogged clothes had been an encumbrance; climbing out of it, they were an almost intolerable burden.

"Good thing we aren't wearing those dresses," she muttered, as she dragged herself over the rim of the vat. "We'd never have got out."

"We aren't out of the wood yet," Victoria warned her.

There was another ladder on the outside of the vat, down which the two climbed, Lucie leading the way. As they climbed, there were ominous creaks and crashes from all around. Before they reached the bottom, the building shook again, knocking Lucie off the ladder. She landed awkwardly, bruising herself on some protruding bit of machinery. Victoria let out a little shriek, but managed to keep hold of the ladder. She half-climbed, half-slid to ground level.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

Lucie rubbed her bruises. "Dunno if I'll be able to sit down tomorrow, but I don't think it's broken the skin. Let's get out of—"

Even as she spoke, the building shook once more. There were a series of crashes and splashes as debris, shaken loose from who knew where, dropped from above in and around the vats of dye.

"Any idea which way _is_ out?" she added.

"I can't say." Victoria sounded close to tears. "I can't see properly. My eyes won't stay open."

"Me too. Must be that dye." Lucie resisted the temptation to rub her eyes; with her hands still wet with dye, it would just make matters worse. "We'd better hold hands, so we don't lose track of each other."

She took Victoria's right hand in her left, and began to work her way round the vat, feeling her way as much as seeing it. She spared a few mental curses for whatever madman, probably Kernis, had ordered all the windows sealed, and a few more for the rest of this world, for not coming up with better lighting than oil lamps.

Another tremor shook the building.

"If any of those soldiers finds us now, we're finished," Victoria said.

"I can't hear any." Lucie shook her head again, spraying droplets of dye over her surroundings. "And we need to get our eyes sorted out, as fast as we can."

She set off in the direction where she guessed the way out was, her hands stretched out in front of her, and promptly tripped over a fallen beam that had once been part of the walkway. Had Victoria not been holding her hand, she'd have fallen, and possibly injured herself seriously; when she cautiously felt the beam, there were sharp bits of metal sticking out of it.

Once they were past that obstacle, though, it wasn't far to the end of the room. The door wouldn't open until they both threw their weight against it, and having opened, it wouldn't close again.

They hurried down the stairs. The door at the bottom was open, and the daylight, dim though it was, turned the view into a wash of blurred colour. As they staggered out into the courtyard, the rain hit them. It was as if they'd stepped into a cold shower, turned fully on. The sky was black from horizon to horizon, and raindrops were drumming on the cobbles, throwing up a fine spray. If Victoria and Lucie hadn't been soaked through already, a few seconds in that rain would have done it handily.

In the few seconds that she could keep her eyes open, Lucie spotted a horse trough. She let go of Victoria's hand, hurried over to it as fast as she could, and dunked her head in it. The stinging in her eyes lessened. Beside her there was another splash, as Victoria did likewise. Then, as they pushed their wet hair out of their eyes, they looked at each other and simultaneously burst out laughing.

"You're orange!" Victoria giggled.

"So are you!" Lucie looked down at her own hands, to see that they were the same shade. "And your hair! It's sort of... streaky. All sorts of different orangey browns."

"I suppose auburn would have been too much to hope for. I'm afraid yours is just, well, orange." Victoria laughed again, sounding a little hysterical. "I've never seen such a sight!"

"Like you're anything to write home about." Lucie rinsed her hands in the trough, but it didn't make them any less orange. "This stuff doesn't want to come off."

"We'll have to get jobs as orange girls." Victoria managed to get a grip on herself. "But where is everyone?"

The courtyard was empty, the stable doors hanging open. No guards were visible at the main gate, or anywhere else.

"I dunno. I don't like it. The Major couldn't have done this with a few smoke bombs. Even if he'd killed them there'd be bodies all over the place."

"They must have left. Perhaps it's dangerous to stay here." Victoria suddenly spun round. "What was that?"

"What?"

"I saw something move, I'm sure I did. We should get away from here, as quickly as possible."

Lucie looked around. Maybe it was an illusion, but the building they'd come from looked as if it was swaying. A few tiles slid gently off the roof, tumbled to the ground and smashed on the cobbles, sending fragments of fired clay skittering in their direction.

"Sounds like a plan," she said.

The obvious way out was through the gatehouse, in the range that joined the mill to the building they'd been imprisoned in. Its archway was large enough to admit a horse and cart, and the gates hung open; they were through it in seconds, finding themselves on the bridge over the millrace and the river. Water was now surging along both channels — yellow-grey, laden with branches, logs and other flotsam. The timbers of the bridge were slippery with water, but they crossed as quickly as they dared, hanging onto the handrail, anxious to spend as little time above that torrent as possible. Every time a piece of debris hit one of the pillars, the whole bridge shook, and the impacts were frequent enough to feel like a rain of hammer blows.

Once across the bridge, the pair ducked under the trees and looked back. The river was still rising, the water overflowing the artificial banks of the mill-race and tearing greedily at the foundations of the buildings. At the upstream end, a whole shower of tiles slid off the roof of the range they'd been imprisoned in and into the water, which swallowed them without a trace. The nearer chimney of the mill itself leaned outwards, cracks gaping in the walls around it, and then toppled into the seething flood. Greenish dye poured from the jagged hole in the wall, as from a wound.

"It's going," Victoria whispered, almost to herself.

In the clouds above, there was a brilliant flash, and the air was filled with the boom of thunder. But as the thunder died away, other sounds could be heard — the crack of timber, the groans of falling masonry, the sharp metallic snap of breaking cast-iron pillars. The whole end wall of the mill crumbled in one avalanche of brick, as did the gatehouse beside it. For a few moments, the two watchers could see the rooms laid open, floor above floor, the equipment all neatly lined up under the drive shafts. Looking further up, Lucie discerned the secret attic, now with nothing between it and the sky save a few shattered rafters.

Almost at once, the end of the other building followed. Lucie found herself vertiginously imagining what it would have been like if they'd still been at the window where they'd seen the Major, looking out into the forest. The building would have been shaking around them, the rat-lizards screaming in terror. Then the wall in front of them would have dropped away, the floor tilting, dropping them into the river with a few tons of rubble on their heads for good measure. And rubble was still pouring down. For a moment, Lucie fancied she caught a glimpse of the room that had done temporary duty as their cell, with the tray and two bowls still in the middle of the floor. But almost at once, it was gone, as the mill and its ancillary buildings continued their collapse, floor after floor sliding down and forwards. In the chaos of brick, wood and tile, it wasn't possible to see what was happening to the contents of Kernis's lab; maybe the bottles of poison were releasing their deadly contents, but the water swallowed them all. The further chimney stack leaned inwards and crumpled. For a moment it seemed as if the wreckage had completely dammed the river; then, in a swirl of beams and floating junk, the water roared downstream. The bridge, hit by a rain of timber and masonry, shuddered one last time, snapped, and was swept away.

"Did you see..." Lucie began, and then broke off. What difference would it make if Victoria had seen Kernis's body in the raging waters? It wasn't as if either of them could retrieve it.

"We need to find the Doctor," Victoria said.

Lucie jumped, as a stream of chilly water that had penetrated the trees ran down her neck. "Just now, we need to get out of this rain."

They set out along the road, side by side.


	13. There's Gratitude For You

Before they'd managed to get within sight of the town, it was quite clear to Lucie what the Doctor had meant about military activity. In this weather, you couldn't move anything. The road had been reduced to an endless sea of mud, and you counted yourself lucky when it was only ankle-deep. If you tried to shelter under the trees, you'd probably get brained by a branch coming down on your head. The rain and wind were, if anything, stronger than when they'd set out, and the cloud so thick that a premature twilight seemed to have come upon the world.

At her side, Victoria said something, but the wind blowing all around them whipped her words away.

"What?" Lucie yelled.

"I said I don't know how much further I can go!" Victoria shouted back.

Lucie nodded. In these conditions, under the relentless rain, the town might as well have been a thousand miles away. They'd collapse from the cold and the wet and simple exhaustion before they stood a chance of getting there. Normally, she'd have boasted of being impervious to the cold, or of having put up with worse when clubbing in Blackpool, but she had to admit to herself that this felt different. It was as if the wind and rain battering against her were draining the life from her.

A score of aching, plodding steps brought them to the next bend in the road. The next stretch opened before them, another neverending vista of mud, rainwater and fallen branches.

Victoria clutched Lucie's arm, and pointed. If she'd said anything, Lucie didn't hear it; but she didn't need to. On one side of the road, not too far away, was what looked like an empty wagon, mired and abandoned, with no sign of the driver or whatever animals had been pulling it. But there was enough space to crawl under it, and at least get some measure of shelter from the rain and the wind.

They ducked gratefully under the wagon and crouched side by side, listening to the rain drumming on the rough boards above.

"Now what?" Lucie said.

"Stay here till the rain stops?" Victoria sounded uncertain. "It can't go on for ever."

"But it can go on until night. Then we wouldn't stand a chance."

"Do you still think Fate isn't trying to chase me down?"

"Oh, don't be stupid." Lucie took Victoria's hand, which felt horribly cold. "There's got to be something we can do."

"If you have any suggestions, I should like to hear them."

Lucie took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

"Sorry," she said. "I can't think straight. The cold must be getting to me. All I can think of is waiting for the Doctor to come and look for us."

"He will be looking for us, of course," Victoria said with utter conviction.

"That or the Headhunter. She tends to show up just when you don't want her. Right now I'd shake her hand if she did."

"The Headhunter?"

"Don't suppose you've met her. Not really a nice person." Lucie shook her head. "I don't think she really will turn up. It was just a joke."

"Then we shall have to wait and hope that the Doctor finds us."

How long they did wait, huddling together for warmth, watching the rain ceaselessly pouring from the sky, neither Lucie nor Victoria was afterwards sure. But when Lucie woke from what might have been an uneasy dream, or a reverie, or a hallucination, she realised that they were surrounded. All around the wagon were the legs of the horse-like creatures, not moving.

She nudged Victoria, who seemed to be sunk in a similar daze, and the pair crawled out from under the wagon. The rain was still falling, but it didn't seem as heavy as earlier; nor was the wind so fierce. The wagon was now at the centre of a ring of the beasts, each one with a cloaked and booted rider on its back.

"Don't suppose you're going to be mountain rescue, are you?" Lucie asked, addressing the riders in general.

One of the riders brought his mount nearer. Unlike the others, whose cloaks were obviously military uniforms, this one was clad in plain black. He reined in his horse and looked down at them, the lower part of his face covered by a scarf, the upper part shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat.

"You two," he— she— said coldly.

"Dornan?" Victoria sounded as if she could scarcely believe her ears.

"Yes, you little brat!" Dornan pulled her scarf off, so that her face was visible. "Imbecilic girls! Do you even realise how long I'd been planning this?"

"You wanted to be kidnapped," Lucie said flatly.

"Of course I did!"

"By Governor Harkett," Victoria said. "But that doesn't make any sense. He wasn't anyone special. Why did you want him to kidnap you?"

"She wanted that stuff in the mill," Lucie said. "That's right, isn't it?"

Dornan clenched her fists. "I knew he'd lock me up in the same place as he kept all his other secrets. If you lackbrains hadn't come blundering in I'd have them in my hands by now!"

"Let me guess. That fall off his horse wasn't an accident."

"The stupid clod came to the mill that night to ask Kernis for advice. He'd ask him about anything. I used to wonder how he put his trousers on in the morning without Kernis there to tell him how. This time it was because the Viceroy was sending someone to ask questions. He was panicking. He'd have given too much away. I had my men deal with him."

"Your men?" Victoria said. "These, I presume, are they. How came you by them?"

"Money, how else? When I staged my own kidnap, I brought jewellery with me. While Harkett was talking to Kernis, I managed a few words with the chief of his private army. I promised the men a diamond apiece if they killed Harkett and left his corpse in a suitable place, and greater rewards in the future if they remained loyal to me."

Lucie nodded. "Sounds like the Major should have spent less time suspecting us and more suspecting you. Do I want to know what happened to him?"

"A similar accident. Do you know how many people die in the floods each year? One more won't make a difference. Nobody will suspect anything, even if they do find his body."

"He didn't deserve that. He was trying to take you back to your dad."

"My father!" The mention of the Viceroy seemed to enrage Dornan, ironically making her look more like him than ever. "With what was in that mill I'd have shown my father who the real power in this province was. Marry me off to some backwater princeling, would he? I'd have had him thrown to the serpents!"

"And those are your true feelings towards your father," Victoria said, her voice suddenly colder than the rain. "Then I pity you."

"Pity!" Dornan spat. "What do I want with your pity?"

"Nonetheless, I give it to you. You, and your people, and all your world. As bad as you are, you don't deserve what is going to happen to you."

"Spare me your pious sentiments." Dornan nudged her steed into motion, and rode out of the circle of cavalrymen surrounding Lucie, Victoria and the wagon. Once she was out of the circle, she turned again. "As you have probably guessed, no-one must know that I am still alive. Kill them both."

This last remark was addressed to the man beside her, a burly veteran whose cloak and scarf didn't conceal the scars on his face or the dead, unfeeling look in his eyes. Moving slowly and carefully, he climbed out of the saddle, drew his sword, and advanced through the mud towards them.

Lucie glanced around, looking for somewhere to run to. There was nowhere. Beside her, Victoria was standing quietly, somehow managing to look dignified in spite of her orange skin and her bedraggled, dirty clothes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Goodbye, Victoria."

Victoria squeezed her hand. "Goodbye, Lucie."


	14. Trapped 'Twixt Wind And Water

In the next few seconds, sight and sound flooded over Lucie so quickly that she was only able to distinguish a few momentary impressions.

The soldier, raising his sabre—

A brilliant white flash—

The clap of thunder, so loud that it felt like a box on the ears rather than a normal sound—

The horse-creatures rearing, screaming in terror—

The sabre, still held high, unmoving—

And suddenly Lucie realised that there was a tall, dark figure standing behind the soldier, gripping his sword arm firmly.

"Run!" the Doctor shouted, his voice seeming to come from a long way away. His free arm swept out, pointing off the road, to where the woodland sloped away downhill. "Now!"

Lucie dragged her feet out of the mud and staggered in the direction indicated, dimly aware of Victoria at her side. As they struggled over the earth bank that marked the edge of the road, there was another flash and detonation behind her. It wasn't thunder, she realised. It had to be some contrivance of the Doctor's.

On the far side of the bank, the ground was wet, slippery with blue-black leaves, and steep. Running wasn't a problem, but at this rate stopping would be. Lucie let go of Victoria's hand; she needed both arms to keep her balance. Branches whipped at her, and tree trunks loomed up in front of her, causing her to make desperate last-minute dodges. She didn't dare look back, but could imagine the cavalrymen running after them, perhaps on foot, perhaps riding those tremendous beasts down the hill after them.

 _At this rate,_ she thought, _I'm going to start believing Victoria's stories about fate trying to kill us._

She stumbled, fell forwards, and half-rolled, half-slid some way down the hill. As she tried to get up, a hand grabbed her arm.

"Get off me!" she shouted. "Or I'll do something you'll..."

Her voice tailed off as she realised who was holding her.

"...Doctor." She looked around. Victoria was a little way off, running frantically towards them. And, further back, were the cavalrymen, presumably with Dornan among them.

"Now what?" she asked.

At the same moment, Victoria arrived, gasping for breath.

"No time," the Doctor said. "Run!"

Taking hold of both his companions' hands, he set off at a pace they were hard put to match. Ahead, the sound of running water was growing; they must be approaching a river, perhaps the same one that they'd crossed back at the mill. By the sound of it, it was in flood.

Abruptly, the trees came to an end, and they were in a clearing, at the centre of which was a wooden tower. The door at the bottom stood open. Beyond the tower was an expanse of rapidly-flowing water, spreading all the time, carrying logs, timbers, debris, and humanoid and animal carcasses.

"What is it?" Victoria managed. "A watch tower?"

"Doesn't matter!" The Doctor pressed on, dragging the other two behind him. By the time they reached the tower, the water was already there, moving swiftly enough to tug at their feet. They splashed through the open door into the dark, dripping interior, pushed the door closed behind them, and barred it against their pursuers. Almost at once someone pushed on it, and then hammered angrily.

The water was now knee-deep, and rising. The Doctor waded across to a ladder in the corner.

"Come on," he said. "Up you get."

Lucie caught hold of the ladder, but her arms seemed to be losing feeling. The rung she was grasping slipped out of her numbed fingers.

"I... I can't," she said. "Sorry. I just can't."

"What about you, Victoria?"

Victoria could do no more than shake her head.

"Then I'll carry you." He scooped Victoria up in his arms. "Lucie, hang onto the ladder. I'll come back for you. I promise."

"You'd better," Lucie muttered, hooking her elbow round the ladder and clinging desperately on as the cold water rose higher up her legs. "'Cos if you don't I'll... I'll think of something. And that's a promise too."

Before she had thought of anything, the Doctor's arms were round her and she was being carried up the ladder. Below, the sounds of hammering on the door were continuing, and these were complemented by groanings and rumblings from the wooden structure of the tower. She remembered what the fury of the water had done to the mill, and to the bridge.

The square of light above, which must be the trapdoor, was suddenly right above her head. She reached out feebly and managed to guide her chilled body through. The top of the tower was no more than a square of wood with a crude parapet, now, of course, all awash with rain.

The Doctor peered over the parapet.

"Dornan!" he called. "Call your men off. You're risking their lives in this flood."

What answer, if any, Dornan made, Lucie didn't hear. She was having a hard time making anything out over the continued sounds of the storm and the river. Forcing herself to look up, she noticed Victoria, lying nearby, looking horribly still.

"Victoria!" she shouted, crawling over to her. Even that effort was nearly beyond her. "Stay awake!"

Then, the Doctor was with them, helping them both to their feet, one arm round each of them. Below them, the tower shuddered. The sound of the hammering on the door changed; the wood was beginning to crack under the repeated blows.

"This is the end, isn't it?" Lucie said. "If those men don't get us, we'll die of exposure or drown."

"And you said I was an empty glass person." The Doctor pulled her close, heedless of the mud and dye she was covered with. "I'm not beaten yet."

Gently, he disengaged his other arm from Victoria, delved in his pocket, produced his mobile telephone, and pressed the same few buttons as before.

"Are you there?" he asked.

Lucie and Victoria were both sufficiently close that they heard the Master's "And where else would I be?"

"Please tell me the TARDIS is working," the Doctor said, a note of tension in his voice.

"As it happens," the voice replied, oozing smugness even through a tinny mobile phone speaker, "it is. At least, as much as it ever does. Control was restored two hours, twenty-three minutes ago. Can you remember what you were doing then?"

"Later." The tower was shaking, and the sounds of rending wood from below were becoming alarming. "First, get the TARDIS here. Now!"

"Oh dear. Don't the locals appreciate what you've done? Never mind. At least our lords and masters do."

The telephone clicked off. The Doctor put it back in his pocket.

"So he's on his way to pick us up?" Lucie asked.

"He'd better be." Victoria clutched at the Doctor as the tower lurched beneath them.

Between the howling of the wind, the roaring of the water, and the crashing of sabre blades against the door, none of them heard the TARDIS materialising until the process had almost completed. The blue box was fading into view in thin air, a couple of feet above the parapet. From where they stood, it appeared to be swinging to and fro like a pendulum; in fact, Lucie realised, it was in one place and what was moving was the tower.

Almost before the TARDIS had finished appearing, the Doctor was hammering at its door. It swung open, and he snatched up Victoria and thrust her through the opening. Lucie, before she could react, found herself similarly lifted and pushed in; then the Doctor scrambled aboard. The sounds of storm, flood, and collapsing tower faded as the main doors closed behind the trio.

  


On her hands and knees, shivering and exhausted, Lucie looked up. The Master was at the console, though as the Doctor approached it he drew back slightly, as a second-in-command might defer to his captain.

"Ah," he said. "You're back."

"Obviously," the Doctor replied drily.

"And with the same number of young women as when you left. I take it we may report another successful mission to those in authority over us."

"Correct." The Doctor pulled off his dripping, dye-streaked overcoat and hung it on one of the railings surrounding the TARDIS console. "If they ring up with any more little jobs for me, tell them I'm in the bath." He set off for the inner door, pausing halfway as he remembered something. "You'd better get Victoria and Lucie something to eat. They've had a rough time."

The Master waited until he'd left, then turned to the other two.

"A rough time?" he said. "Thereby hangs a tale, I don't doubt. And I see that you have both been experimenting with fake tan. Forgive me for saying so, but I think you have overdone it."

As the warmth of the TARDIS began to sink into her cramped and chilled limbs, Lucie felt her spirit returning.

"I'm not telling you anything till I've had something to eat," she said, climbing unsteadily to her feet. "Why don't you do what the boss told you and lay on refreshments? I'll have a beef kebab and a beer."

"And for the lady?" the Master asked, glancing at Victoria, and putting the faintest possible emphasis on 'lady'.

"Whatever's easiest for you," Victoria replied. "As long as it's edible, I won't much mind."

"Very well." The Master bowed ironically, and headed for the kitchen.

"Dunno why you're so polite to that bloke," Lucie said. "You don't have to make his life easy."

"He is the Doctor's trusted servant. His position deserves respect."

"His position is he stays in the TARDIS all day while I'm getting chased around by men with swords and trying to put up with a load of freaks... Sorry. I didn't mean to call you a freak."

"Why not? I appreciate that I must seem very queer to you."

"Not sure I'd have gone for that particular word, but yeah, when we met I didn't know what to make of you."

"And you do now?"

"Yeah. Look, I don't know how to put this..." Lucie found herself tongue-tied, not sure what she wanted to say, let alone how to say it.

"Miss Miller—"

That was one point on which Lucie had plenty to say. "You can drop all that 'Miss Miller' stuff. You called me Lucie when you thought we were gonna die, so you can call me Lucie now, OK?"

"Lucie, then. Would it help if I said that I think you're one of the bravest and most unquenchable people I've met?"

"You're no slouch yourself. That thing about dressing up as soldiers and setting the horses loose — that was brilliant."

"It was a nightmare. And I'm sure we looked nothing like soldiers."

"No." Lucie laughed suddenly. "But I know a lot of blokes who'd think we looked dead sexy. Girls dressed as soldiers? That's—"

There was a discreet cough. They both spun round, to see that the Master had reappeared. Like the butler he so often seemed to be either portraying or parodying, he had the unnerving ability to move soundlessly.

"And whose idea was this orgy of crossdressing?" he asked.

"Mine," Victoria said, in a small voice.

"It was a brilliant idea," Lucie added firmly. "She looked great."

"Something that is sadly no longer the case." He looked them up and down. "Might I suggest that a change of attire would be in order?"

Lucie had been thinking exactly the same thing, but she wasn't going to be told how to dress by someone who'd spent the last few days lounging about in the TARDIS while she'd been chased up hill and down dale.

"I'll wear what I like," she retorted.

The Master raised an eyebrow. "As you wish. But I cannot allow those rags to come into contact with the best furniture, so you shall have to take your dinner standing up. And I do not imagine that you find it comfortable to go about barefoot."

"Barefoot?" Lucie looked down, realising for the first time that somewhere in their exploits, both of them had lost their shoes. "When did that happen?"

"I think our shoes must have come off in all that mud." Victoria wiggled her toes. "Perhaps when we were running away from those horsemen?"

"But surely we'd have noticed?"

"We were a little busy at the time."

"Might I suggest that you leave that question until after you have bathed?" the Master smoothly interjected. "Assuming that you plan to at some point."

"Why don't you flush your head down the bog?" Lucie snapped, and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.

Victoria turned to the Master, intending to apologise on Lucie's behalf. But before she could open her mouth, he was already talking.

"It would be as well," he said, "if, once you have changed into less disreputable garments, you were to mop up the footprints you're leaving on the floor. My duties do not include those of a janitor."

Victoria summoned all her reserves of hauteur. "Did you have anything to tell us? I presume that is why you are here and not in the kitchen as you were instructed."

"Your meal will be ready in twelve minutes," the Master replied. "Perhaps, when Miss Miller is teaching you how to use the shower, you could pass this information on to her?"

Victoria turned, and swept away without another word.


	15. Post Mortem

After a shower and a change of clothes, Lucie had started to feel better. With her hair newly bleached, a generous application of makeup, and most of her body covered by jeans and a long-sleeved top, the only visible sign of her exploits was the orange dye on her hands. The meal had improved her temper further. Not only was the Master a dab hand at cookery, but he'd made the same meal for both her and Victoria — on the grounds that that was obviously the easiest course of action for him — and the sight of Victoria trying to eat a kebab politely had cheered her up no end.

The Doctor had joined them towards the end of the meal. Rather than joining his companions in kebabs or conversation, he had contented himself with bread, water and the occasional conscience-stricken glance at Lucie or Victoria. After repeated requests, he told his story in the briefest possible terms.

"We split up, as the Major suggested," he said. "I rode to the gunpowder factory. No-one had seen hide or hair of you, or anything else. I had them make me up a few fireworks on the off-chance that they might come in. As you saw, they did."

"Fireworks?" Victoria asked.

"They work in the rain, which guns don't. You don't get much damage, just enough to cause panic."

"I noticed. I take it they work on a similar principle to the Major's smoke bombs."

"I believe you are telling this story from the wrong end," the Master said. He sat down at the opposite end of the table from the Doctor, his manner changing again from servant to co-pilot. "I am not aware of any Major, let alone one with smoke bombs. Shall we have a complete account from the beginning?"

The Doctor looked from Lucie to Victoria and back. "Do you feel up to that now?"

"You tell him what happened when we were together," Lucie said. "We'll fill in the gaps."

*

"I found that account a little sparse," the Master said. "It is a pity that you were not keeping a more accurate track of time. It is likely that the TARDIS was reactivated at about the time of your escape from the mill, but of all the things you did in there, it is anybody's guess which one caused the reactivation."

"It's possible to guess, though." The Doctor sipped his water. "It wasn't anything to do with Dornan getting back to her father, because she didn't. I'd be more inclined to think it was the destruction of Kernis and his research. Going by what you've said, it could be that Dornan was right: the materials there could have done immense damage. And things like that don't tend to stay secret for ever. In time all the nations on Skaro would have had access to some very nasty chemical and biological weapons. Maybe worse."

"Nuclear? Dystronic?" The Master looked doubtful. "I don't think he'd have succeeded, with the technology at his disposal. Perhaps a crude dirty bomb, nothing more. By the way, you said you didn't recognise any of the nations on the map you saw. So where are the Thals and the Kaleds?"

"I know this one," Lucie said. "The Doctor explained it to us when we found out where we were. If we went to Earth—"

"An event which happens with depressing regularity."

"Well, if we went in 1750, we wouldn't find the USA or the Soviet Union, would we? A few hundred years changes an awful lot of things."

"I see you have learned your lessons well." The Master looked back to the Doctor. "And what do you imagine you have accomplished?"

The Doctor steepled his fingers. "Just maybe, we've dealt a significant blow to Dalek history. With the loss of Kernis's research, the development and use of chemical and biological weapons on Skaro will be very different, perhaps more responsible. They may manage to avoid poisoning the ecosystem with their weapons, and then there won't be any need for armoured machines to protect them from their environment. No Daleks."

"And that's why the Time Lords chose me?" Lucie asked. "Throw me in the mix and I end up causing enough trouble to muck up the timeline?"

"And it's she herself that's said it," the Master murmured.

"I think it took both of you," the Doctor said. "Victoria burned Kernis's notes, and Lucie's tampering with the mill caused it to collapse, destroying the chemicals he'd made."

"You mean the Time Lords knew that was going to happen, and that's why they stuck me in the TARDIS with you?"

"Guessed, I think. They can make projections of an individual's future, as you know."

"Yeah, I know. Say hello to Evil Empress For Life Lucie Miller." She smiled at Victoria's puzzled expression. "Don't worry, I'll explain later."

"Have we really made that much of a difference?" Victoria asked. "Surely somebody else will do the same research Kernis did. And that Empire is full of horrible people. If Dornan didn't have any objection to using such dreadful weapons, I'm sure a lot of other people wouldn't, either." She spread her hands. "We haven't really made anything better. We've just stopped it becoming worse. We've only delayed the inevitable."

"Delaying the inevitable is why you're here," the Doctor replied. "Don't knock it."

"Of course," the Master added. "There is another possibility. According to these young ladies' account the man Kernis was creating a number of lethal poisons and diseases. By releasing these into the river at its full flood, they may have provoked a planet-wide plague, causing Skarosian civilisation to collapse before it could reach the level of technology necessary to create Daleks." He looked from Lucie to Victoria. "Don't worry. Once you've wiped out the population of one planet, the second is always easier."

"Don't listen to him," the Doctor said firmly. "He's just trying to upset you."

"He succeeded," Lucie said, with a shudder.

"And what now?" the Master asked. "Are both these two young ladies to remain with us?"

"I have nowhere else to go," Victoria said.

"And I'm not going anywhere while I'm this colour." Lucie pointed at her hands. "You're going to have to put up with me for now."

"Then I shall look forward to the day you are your original pallid self," the Master replied. "Tell me, given what you have applied to your face, are there any cosmetics left on board?"

Lucie nearly stuck her tongue out at him, but realised that that was probably orange, too.

"What's it to you?" she asked. "You don't look like the sort of fellow who uses lipstick. Unless you secretly— actually, if you do anything secretly with lipstick, I don't want to know."

The Doctor unexpectedly laughed. "Now there's a pretty mental image for all of us. Unless anybody has any more questions, I suggest an early night."

*

"Oh," Victoria said. "I'm exhausted."

"Me too," Lucie admitted. "All that running. Is this your room?"

"Yes."

"Nice. Dunno where mine is. Everything's different to when I was here before."

"You'll have to ask the Master." Victoria sat on the edge of the bed, and yawned hugely. "He'd know."

"Comfy bed," Lucie said, sitting down beside her. "Much better than last night. That prison, with all those horrible rat-lizard things. I don't want to talk about it."

"Neither do I." Victoria let herself fall backwards. "Oh dear. This isn't any good at all. We can't just go to sleep like this. It's..." she yawned again. "It really won't do."

"Let's have a little rest. Five minutes. Then I'll go away and you can get ready for bed." She lay down beside Victoria. "Five minutes, that's all."

"Five minutes," Victoria agreed, slipping off her shoes and swinging her legs onto the bed. It wouldn't do any harm to rest her eyes, just for a few seconds.

*

Moving as silently as he could, the Doctor pulled a blanket over the two sleepers. Neither stirred. Then he backed out of the room, and closed the door softly.

"How touching," said a sardonic voice from behind him.

The Doctor spun round, and favoured the Master with his most severe glare. It had the same effect it usually did, which was to say, none at all.

"You realise the lovely Miss Miller won't thank you?" the android continued. "Tomorrow she's going to give you an earful on the subject of letting her sleep in her clothes."

"And if I had woken her up, I'd have had the earful already, for disturbing her rest. I think you may be letting your jealousy get the better of you."

"My jealousy?" The Master's eyebrows shot up.

"Robots don't sleep," the Doctor pointed out. "I think you regret that, now and again."

"Didn't somebody say sleep was for tortoises?" The Master turned on his heel and began to walk away. "Still, I shall need the time it would otherwise have taken, to clean your coat. You really ought to take better care of your clothes."

The Doctor made no answer.

"And your companions," the Master added.

"What?"

"You haven't told the Waterfield girl, have you?"

"What is there to tell her?" The Doctor, given the choice between shouting and following the Master, gave chase.

"That she's right about Time trying to erase her. Why did she even come to your notice in the first place? Because the Daleks kidnapped her. And whose timeline have you three just done your best to destroy? Why, none other than that of those self-same Daleks. She's just wiped out her own reason for being here. That leaves her as a loose thread in the tapestry."

"Good night," the Doctor said firmly, and walked away in the opposite direction.

The Master tutted softly. "Fighting for another lost cause? Sometimes I don't know why I waste my breath on giving you good advice. If I had breath, which I don't. Well, I wish you joy of her. And of the other one. And when something fatal happens to one or both of them, don't come running to me.

"Except you will, of course," he added, watching the Doctor disappear round the corner. "You always do."


End file.
